International pressure continues to mount against Arafat, or more appropriately, reveal how he has lost control of events and of his people. The clock continues to wind down until the eventual moment where Sharon makes his move:
'Wide gaps' delay security meeting
By Herb Keinon and Lamia Lahoud
jpost.com
JERUSALEM (June 11) - An Israel-Palestinian security meeting in Ramallah to be chaired by CIA chief George Tenet was called off at the last minute yesterday, with Israeli security officials quoted as saying gaps between the two sides on the US cease-fire plan were too wide.
Israel and the Palestinians were expected to respond at that meeting to Tenet's plan, which includes calls for the Palestinians to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and end incitement against Israel, and for Israel to refrain from attacking Palestinian targets.
The meeting has been rescheduled for today, and a US official said that Tenet is continuing to "work with both sides." One diplomatic official said this simply means that the talks have not broken down.
Tenet met yesterday with Israeli security chiefs, who accepted the plan but expressed reservations that it did not necessarily ensure a complete end to the violence, but rather focused on firing from Palestinian-controlled Area A into Israel.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday after meeting Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana that what Tenet proposed, "is the best possible [way], though not complete, for both sides to go into a real cease-fire. I think the test is in [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat's actions, not in the words. Arafat needs to understand it's his test, not only ours."
Peres is to leave today for Europe, where he will appear before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, and meet with the heads of the European parliament in Strasbourg. On Wednesday he is expected to meet with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Brussels.
If the test is indeed in what is happening on the ground, then according to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Arafat is failing badly.
Sharon told Persson, who is head of the rotating EU presidency and will chair a summit in Sweden later this week of EU leaders, that Palestinian violence is continuing, and that on Saturday there were 14 violent incidents, following 19 on Friday.
In addition, Sharon told his cabinet yesterday that, despite the cease-fire, he "still does not see actions or serious efforts on the part of the PA to stop the terrorism." According to a communique issued after the weekly cabinet meeting, Sharon also said that he has not yet seen the arrests required by the cease-fire framework, and he noted "there are reports of preparations for further terrorist attacks in Israel."
Sharon also told the cabinet that, before any diplomatic moves can take place, all terrorism, violence and incitement must stop. In addition, he said, Israel insists there will be no progression from stage to stage in accordance with the Mitchell Report without full implementation of the preceding stage.
The Mitchell Report calls for a cessation of violence, followed by a cooling-off period, followed by confidence-building measures, and then a return to negotiations. Although Israel views these as sequential stages, the Palestinians claim they represent a package deal, the elements of which need to be implemented simultaneously.
"We will continue seeking the full implementation of the Mitchell Report as a package, with a total Israeli freezing on settlement activities - including the so-called natural growth," Arafat said in a statement after meeting with Persson in Ramallah.
Solana, a member of the Mitchell Committee, seemed to adopt Israel's position when he told a Jerusalem press conference after meeting with Peres, together with Persson, that "the most important thing is to have a cease-fire that is durable, that is taken seriously by both sides. Once that is achieved, then there is a possibility of going on to the next steps of the report, the recommendations linked to confidence-building measures. We hope very much that we can get to that stage as quickly as possible. That would mean that the cease-fire has been completed and the climate is propitious for confidence building measures."
One of the confidence-building measures recommended by the Mitchell Committee report is the controversial settlement freeze.
Persson dodged the timetable issues, saying in response to a Jerusalem Post Radio question that if he were to start talking now about the timetable, "I would immediately confuse the important focus on the cease-fire." Persson advocated sticking to the cease-fire, and "if that works, then we can come back to a discussion on the timetable."
While Tenet was trying to put together a truce yesterday, US envoy William Burns was meeting separately with both sides to try and come up with an agreeable framework on how to implement the Mitchell Report. Burns is likely to spend another day in Israel.
Following his meeting with Persson, Arafat told reporters that EU observers are already working in Beit Jala, Beit Sahur, and Bethlehem. He was referring to a group of EU security experts, headed by a senior EU adviser on security, Alister Crook, which is in Palestinian areas observing the cease-fire. Crook was one of the EU experts working with the fact-finding commission which collected information for the Mitchell report.
Arafat welcomed the EU's decision to send in security experts, calling them international observers, and said he looked forward to a joint US-European meeting in Sweden later this week. The meeting, which is to be attended by US President George W. Bush, will try to formulate a common US-EU declaration on the Middle East.
The Palestinians welcome the move and hope this will guarantee greater EU involvement to balance the US position, which they perceive as too pro-Israel. Persson welcomed Palestinian efforts to implement a cease-fire.
Arafat has long been asking the UN to dispatch international observers to the Palestinian areas, but his demand has been denied due to Israeli opposition to the idea and the US veto in the UN Security Council. Arafat has also demanded there be an international monitoring committee to ensure the Mitchell report is implemented fully by both sides.
Europe supports the idea. The EU security experts are actually some kind of first step toward such a committee since their job is to monitor the cease-fire.
One PA source said the presence of the EU observers has already helped reduce violence in that area. He said the security experts are working closely with the Palestinian security services and are reporting positively about the PA's efforts to impose a cease-fire. He said there are plans to station them all over the West Bank and the southern Gaza Strip, where the tension is highest. However, Israel so far refuses to agree to that, he added.
Another senior Palestinian source denied Israeli press reports that Israel objects to their presence. At first there were problems, because Israel refuses international observers, but the Israelis agreed to accept their presence as security experts, not observers, the Palestinian source said .
Another PA source said that both Israel and the US were annoyed at the presence of the observers.
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I would imagine that Sharon is probably perturbed by having EU observers in place, because it presents the possibility that Arafat can crack down on Hamas and claim that he did so under pressure of the EU security experts and not of his own accord. Israel would rather make Arafat directly responsible for controlling his own people (or failing to control them, thus justifying the IDF's planned attack to take out the extremist infrastructure and arms caches).
Hawk |
