GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The rival Hamas and Fatah movements agreed on a plan implicitly recognizing Israel, a top Palestinian official said today after weeks of acrimonious negotiations meant to lift crippling international aid sanctions.

"We have an agreement over the document," said Ibrahim Abu Najah, coordination of the "national dialogue" over the proposal.

Moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has been trying to coax his Hamas rivals into endorsing the document, which calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A Palestinian militant leader said today that a captured Israeli soldier was being held in a "secure place," and he claimed that his group also seized a Jewish settler in the West Bank.The new claims came from the Popular Resistance Committees, a violent group with close ties to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. The PRC was one of three groups that participated in Sunday's cross-border infiltration near Gaza in which militants killed two Israeli soldiers and abducted Cpl. Gilad Shalit."The soldier is in a secure place that the Zionists cannot reach," PRC spokesman Mohammed Abdel Al said in the first acknowledgment by militants that Shalit was still alive.The kidnappers have not said where Shalit is being held or released any photographs of the 19-year-old soldier.Abdel Al also said his group had taken a Jewish settler in the West Bank hostage. Israel Radio reported the settler had been hitchhiking Monday night and failed to return home."We're looking into reports of a missing person and we're relating to them very seriously," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.Abdel Al said the release of further information would depend on Israel."The Zionists are looking for any information. We remind them there is nothing for free," he told reporters in Gaza Strip.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected a demand to release Palestinian prisoners in return for information about Shalit. Instead, he approved plans for a large-scale military push into Gaza and threatened to hit Islamic militants and their leaders.

BAGHDAD, Iraq— Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants will stand trial starting Aug. 21 for his 1980s military campaign against Kurds, Iraq's High Tribunal said today.An estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed in the operation in northern Iraq. Known as "Anfal," Arabic for "spoils of war," the campaign was aimed at crushing independence-minded Kurdish militias and clearing out the Kurdish population along the sensitive Iranian border.Saddam had accused Kurdish militias of ties to Iran. Thousands of Kurdish villages were razed and their inhabitants either killed or displaced.Thee campaign included "savage military attacks on civilians," including "the use of mustard gas and nerve agents ... to kill and maim rural villagers and to drive them out of their homes," the tribunal said in a memo issued in April.