MATTHEW LEE, Jerusalem | Monday
AS US Secretary of State Colin Powell came up empty handed in talks for a desperately-sought ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a surprise proposal for a US-led Middle East peace conference.
Israel’s hardline premier, whose troops are continuing their deadly operation in autonomous Palestinian land, proposed the United States organise a conference for a peace settlement.
”This conference would be held under the aegis of the United States, should be held at a neutral venue and gather representatives from Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states,” said Sharon representative Raanan Gissin.
The announcement came as Powell’s peace mission appeared to reach a dead-end as Sharon again refused to commit to a deadline for pulling back his troops and ending Israel’s army offensive against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
The top US diplomat had earlier bowed to Arab pressure and made a dramatic visit to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at his besieged compound in Ramallah as he tries to hammer out an elusive ceasefire to end 18 months of bloodshed.
But Colin Powell came out empty-handed of Arafat’s pock-marked West Bank headquarters which the army has encircled for more than two weeks, as the Palestinians, who were asked to halt suicide attacks, said a withdrawal was needed before they could fulfil their ”security obligations.”
An Israeli official confirmed that Sharon, who says Israel is in a ”war of survival” against Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed scored of civilians, would not pull out forces until its crackdown on militants is over.
Powell met with Sharon for one hour in Tel Aviv, ahead of a lightning visit on Monday to Lebanon and Syria, two nations under pressure from the United States to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas near Israel’s northern border. Washington showed growing impatience on Sunday about Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the West Bank areas it has seized in the last 17 days. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC television that the Israelis ”need to move more quickly” to end the controversial operation.
Powell began the third day of his high-stakes peace bid with a first-hand look at the devastation in the West Bank, as his motorcade rolled past the open sewers and bombed-out cars on the desolate streets of Ramallah.
At the compound where the Palestinian leader has been pinned down by Israeli tanks and troops since the offensive began on March 29, Powell held three hours of talks with Arafat and his top aides to stop the suicide attacks.
”The secretary went in to deliver a very strong message to Chairman Arafat, that the president and all are watching to make certain that he follows up on some of the very positive statements that the Palestinian Authority made yesterday (on Saturday),” Rice said.
She was referring to Arafat’s condemnation of any attacks targeting civilians, whether Israel or Palestinian, but Rice nevertheless urged the trapped leader to follow ”words with action.”
Rice said there will be a follow-up meeting in the region on Monday with US envoy Anthony Zinni ”to try to put forward a plan,” based on the so-called Tenet plan for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ”to try to move this forward” and end the cycle of violence which has cost around 2 000 lives.
Asked if Arafat would make a full effort to end the violence, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said: ”Once the Israelis complete their withdrawal, we will, as Palestinians, carry out our obligations.”
Powell had few words after the talks, telling reporters: ”We just completed a useful and constructive exchange with Chairman Arafat and his staff.”
Despite the apparent impasse Powell’s mission was facing on Sunday night, the United States hedged its response to Sharon’s summit proposal, only saying it was open to the option.
”He (Powell) noted that Sharon had proposed the idea and they talked about how it might be done as part of a way to move forward politically,” a US official said on condition of anonymity. ”But there is still more discussion necessary on both sides to see how we would do it and where it would be set.” Traditionally, Israel has always resisted calls for international peace conferences, fearing it would be isolated by Arab states and only accepted the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, co-sponsored by Washington and Moscow, under heavy US pressure. Meanwhile, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, speaking on ABC television on Sunday, called for a comprehensive Mideast peace plan to be reached with US help. International concern and condemnation have been mounting over the events in the Jenin refugee camp, site of a furious days-long battle that the Palestinians claim was a massacre. The army escorted a group of reporters into the battered camp on Sunday, and dismissed the Palestinian allegations. However, a French journalist, who spent 48 hours in the camp during the fighting, said witnesses told him the army buried bodies in a mass grave in the camp’s main square and then filled it with concrete, adding the smell of decomposing bodies was thick in the air. Official Israeli spokespeople have been unusually out of synch about the events, and in the latest development in the controversy, Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Elizer said Sunday that ”dozens and not hundreds” of people were killed, most of them armed. The Palestinians say 500 people were killed, half of them women and children, and have asked for an international inquiry. The Israeli supreme court ruled Sunday bodies should be given to Palestinian families. Another area of concern is the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, where around 200 armed Palestinians have been holed up inside for nearly two weeks, with Israeli troops outside. But a leader of the Franciscan order, which has at least 30 and nuns trapped inside the church, said in Rome that a solution could be reached by Monday, breaking a deadlock after the Palestinians rejected an Israeli offer for them either to be exiled permanently or face trial in Israel. – Sapa-AFP