This is nice article explains howto setting List Item Permissions in WSS3.0 or MOSS 2007.
FTA, “One of the cool new things in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (get your public beta here) – and make no mistake, there are a lot of cool things to go around in these products — is fine-grained (item-level) security. This was a big big customer wish from the current “v2†versions of the products, and it’s fantastic to see it in the products now… I’m going set permissions on a individual SPListItem. I’ll create or access a Role Assignment (which essentially represents the user), bind a Role Definition to the Assignment..”
Read more at MSDN…