Netanyahu Talks Tough Ahead Of
Clinton
11:15 a.m. Dec 06, 1998 Eastern
By Paul Holmes
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu raised the heat in a war of words with
President Yasser Arafat over their land-for-security
deal Sunday just days before a sensitive visit by
President Clinton.
In an interview with Reuters, the Israeli leader
accused the Palestinian leadership of lying to its own
people over the terms for the release of Palestinian
prisoners from Israeli jails under the Wye River
interim peace deal.
He repeated that Israel's handover of more of the
West Bank to Palestinian rule would not resume until
Arafat admitted as much, promised not to declare a
Palestinian state next May and met other terms Israel
has set for the process to continue.
''Peace will take place when both sides, not just
Israel, keep their peace contracts and we're not about
to be patsies (suckers) on this,'' Netanyahu said.
He said his right-wing coalition cabinet, which is
deeply divided on the Wye deal, had unanimously
reaffirmed Sunday a decision to halt further
implementation until the Palestinians ceased what
Israel regards as violations of the agreement.
''They said today one opinion -- enough is enough. If
the Palestinians comply, we comply. If they don't
comply, we stop the process,'' Netanyahu said.
Clinton's December 12 to 15 visit to Israel, Gaza and
the West Bank was meant to celebrate the resumption
of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process under the
Wye deal struck in October after 19 months of
deadlock.
Instead, the U.S. leader will be flying in to a
maelstrom of mutual recrimination between the two
parties.
The prisoner issue has become the most explosive,
with a surge of violent Palestinian street protests over
Israel's inclusion of 150 common criminals among 250
Palestinian prisoners it released under the Wye
accord last month.
Netanyahu again accused the Palestinian Authority
Sunday of inciting the unrest, a charge the Palestinians
reject.
Israel gave a verbal pledge at the Wye Plantation
summit in Maryland to release 750 prisoners in three
stages but disputes Palestinian assertions that all
would be security detainees.
Netanyahu said he had made clear at Wye that he
would not free prisoners ''with blood on their hands''
or members of the Islamic militant movement Hamas.
''I don't sign agreements to release murderers,'' he
said.
''The Palestinians come back, they know the truth
and they lie to their people,'' he said. ''It's high time
that the Palestinians told their people the truth.''
The United States Friday backed the way Israel has
gone about freeing Palestinian prisoners under the
deal and urged the parties to resolve the issue through
direct talks.
It also advised the parties that unilateral acts and
statements would ''court disaster'' in peacemaking.
Arafat has said repeatedly that he will declare an
independent state next May on the expiry of a
five-year interim period set down in the Oslo peace
accords.
He was less unambiguous about the date of a
declaration of independence in a speech in Stockholm
Saturday which also contained conciliatory
undertakings that a Palestinian state would not enter
into any military alliance against Israel.
Netanyahu rejected Arafat's Stockholm speech as
inadequate and said the Palestinian leader had to state
categorically that he would pursue only a negotiated
settlement.
''What he must say is that the only way we can have
an agreement is to sit and sit and sit with each other
(and) negotiate until white smoke comes out,''
Netanyahu said.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. |
