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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (446088)	8/21/2003 1:37:30 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

<font color=orange> Forget CNN, its getting real ugly in the ME!<font color=black> ******************************************* Mideast Peace Plan in Tatters GAZA (Aug. 21) - Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab in a missile strike Thursday, two days after a Jerusalem suicide bombing, prompting Islamic militant groups to call off a rocky seven-week-old cease-fire. The collapse of the truce, agreed by militant factions under international pressure, could sink a U.S.-backed ''road map'' peace plan aimed at defusing a 34-month-old uprising and creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by 2005. Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to use security forces he controls to thwart attacks on Israel and warned of the risks of abandoning the road map. ''(I) call on Chairman Arafat to work with (Palestinian) Prime Minister (Mahmoud) Abbas and to make available to ... Abbas those security elements that are under his control so that they can allow progress to be made on the road map -- end terror, end this violence,'' Powell said at the United Nations. ''At the end of the road map is a cliff that both sides will fall off.'' Powell's remarks reflected U.S. concern that a peace plan designed in part to defuse long-standing anti-American sentiment in the Arab world over a perceived pro-Israel bias could be eclipsed by a headlong relapse into tit-for-tat bloodshed. Abu Shanab, a senior figure in Hamas' political wing with a high media profile, died along with two bodyguards when five missiles fired by helicopter gunships shattered his car as it drove through Gaza City, witnesses and medics said. Israel had hours earlier approved a return to tougher military action against militants after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus, one of the bloodiest attacks in almost three years of conflict. Hamas claimed the bombing as retribution for the killing of members of the group -- which is sworn to destroying Israel -- in Israeli army raids that have continued despite the truce. Hamas vowed to avenge Abu Shanab's death and another senior Hamas spokesman said the missile attack freed the group from its commitment to observing the unilateral truce with Israel. CEASE-FIRE 'ASSASSINATED' ''The assassination of Abu Shanab ... means that the Zionist enemy has assassinated the truce and the Hamas movement holds the Zionist enemy fully responsible for the consequences of its crime,'' Ismail Haniyah told reporters in Gaza. Hamas' close ally Islamic Jihad also renounced the truce. Abbas, a moderate committed to coexistence with Israel, called the missile attack ''an ugly crime.'' Aides said it would mean regression into a cycle of violence, thwarting peacemaking. ''Israel's continuation of this escalatory policy will ... weaken the Palestinian Authority's ability to restore calm and to move on to the political process,'' Information Minister Nabil Amr said in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israeli security sources said Abu Shanab was targeted because he was involved in planning militant attacks. ''He was a murderer. I hope it's a lesson for the Hamas people. But it isn't enough, we have to get to each and every Hamas leader,'' said Israeli Vice-Premier Ehud Olmert, a close confidant of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But the Palestinian Authority and independent analysts had considered Abu Shanab among the few relative moderates in Hamas. He took part in several rounds of dialogue between Hamas and Abbas that yielded the cease-fire with Israel. The cease-fire markedly reduced violence but was wobbly from the start on June 29. Some militant cells repudiated the deal and continued sporadic violence against Israelis. But until Thursday, militant faction spokesmen had insisted the truce remained in force and said three suicide bombings since Aug. 12 were solely reprisals for Israeli army raids that netted or killed a handful of wanted men. Sharon's security cabinet said in a statement after overnight deliberations that no progress on the road map was conceivable unless Palestinian authorities took action against militant factions behind attacks -- as the peace plan requires. Abbas's cabinet, which also met overnight, vowed to make all Palestinians comply with ''one authority and rule of law.'' But how it would do so was unclear as Palestinian security organs were smashed by past Israeli offensives against West Bank militants and Abbas lacks credibility among a public who see him as helpless to relieve their privations under Israeli blockades. REUTERS Reut12:12 08-21-03 Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.