JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces detained at least 14 Palestinians in the West Bank on Saturday in a new sweep for militants as international peace efforts looked likely to be eclipsed by wider Middle East developments.

An Israeli army spokesman said 12 "terror suspects" were seized overnight around Ramallah, political base of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and two in the Bethlehem area. Troops continued scouring the city after daybreak.

On Saturday night, the Israeli army killed a Palestinian at the Gaza Strip´s flashpoint border with Egypt.

Israeli military sources said forces opened fire at Palestinian gunmen approaching them near the frontier town of Rafah around midnight and that one of them was hit. Palestinian security officials said Israel had handed over a man´s body from the scene.

On Friday, the army killed two militants in the West Bank. Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to Israel´s destruction which has spearheaded suicide bombings in a more than two-year-old Palestinian independence uprising, issued new calls for revenge.

A "quartet" of Middle East mediators was due to meet next week in Washington on a peace plan initiated more that six months ago.

But diplomats said it was unlikely the so-called road map for three- stage rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians, culminating in security for the former and statehood for the latter, would be completed as scheduled on December 20.

"The signal the United States is sending us is that you should not expect a completed road map. Our side is arguing back on that," a European diplomat said on Friday.

The mediators -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- broadly agree on what the plan should include but disagree on when to release it.

Israelis and Palestinians disagree on the fundamental question of how specific the plan should be.

ISRAEL ELECTIONS, IRAQ WAR TAKE PRECEDENCE

Israeli general elections are scheduled for January 28.

"Washington has made it clear that no final plan will be presented before the new government is in power," an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon´s office said. "Of course, that new government will then have to approve the plan."

A Palestinian official said that demonstrated the United States was again acting as Israel´s guardian ally.

"This shows that the American policy intervenes only for the good of Sharon, not for the good of the peace process," Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

But most in the region believe the road map will go nowhere until the Iraq issue is resolved. The United States has demanded Baghdad give up its alleged weapons of mass destruction voluntarily or face military action to disarm it.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was to leave on Saturday night for a week of high-level talks in New York and Washington, the official in Sharon´s office said.

Mofaz was due to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in a Washington policy speech on Thursday blamed the Middle East stalemate on Palestinian "terror."

Washington backs Israel´s stance that Arafat bears responsibility for suicide bombings and other militant attacks, and has called for new Palestinian leaders to be elected.

Arafat denies culpability and says Israeli countermeasures in the territories have undermined his security forces´ capabilities. On Saturday, he hinted that his continued popularity would be proven at a Palestinian ballot tentatively scheduled for January 20.

"Palestinian people will decide the new Palestinian leadership in the coming elections," Arafat told reporters at his battered Ramallah headquarters on Saturday.

At least 1,720 Palestinians and 670 Israelis have died in the violence which erupted in September 2000, after peace talks stalled. (© Reuters 2002 12/14/02)