Ariel Sharon yesterday shrugged off President Bush’s requests to halt construction on a security fence through the West Bank, vowing that work on the controversial wall would continue.
Addressing journalists after his eighth White House meeting with the president in 30 months, the Israeli prime minister said the barrier ”will continue to be built with every effort to minimise infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population”.
He did not explain how that would be achieved. The fence winds through Palestinian areas, isolating and in some cases splitting local communities. After meeting the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday, President Bush described it as a ”problem” for Middle East peace.
He added: ”It’s very difficult to develop confidence [between the two sides] with a wall snaking through the West Bank.”
Standing alongside Sharon in the White House rose garden yesterday, Bush said he realised the issue was a sensitive one, adding that there would be more negotiations on the subject, but he warned the Israeli leader to ”carefully consider the consequences of Israel’s actions”.
Bush said: ”My promise to him is, we’ll continue to discuss and to dialogue on how best to make sure that the fence sends the right signal.”
He acknowledged that security was an issue, but said ”the ability for the Palestinians to live a normal life is important as well”.
Bush said he hoped that once Palestinian militant organisations had been dismantled, the wall would ultimately become ”irrelevant”.
Sharon said that small, wildcat Jewish settlements on the West Bank, known as ”unauthorised outposts”, would be removed, but made no offer to freeze the construction of state-sponsored settlements, another element of the internationally brokered Middle East peace road map.
The Israeli government has freed a few hundred Palestinian prisoners and Sharon has promised to release a few hundred more, but he said yesterday that he had agreed with the American president that Israel would not release detainees ”with blood on their hands”.
He said the relative lull in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was mainly due to Israeli military operations and US diplomacy rather than the counter-terrorist measures taken by Abbas.
And Sharon warned that terrorist attacks could begin again without notice.
President Bush said that he had asked Sharon to do more. He said: ”In our discussions, I encouraged the prime minister to take further steps to improve the daily conditions faced by Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians deserve the same chance to live normal lives free from fear, free from hatred and violence and free from harassment.
”I also urged the prime minister to carefully consider all the consequences of Israel’s actions as we move forward on the road to peace,” he added.
At the same White House appearance, the president ruled out the publication of a secret section of a congressional report on the September 11 attacks. The classified pages have been reported to refer to possible official Saudi links to the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi subjects.
The Saudi government has denied the allegations and wants the section to be declassified. But even before a meeting yesterday with the foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, Bush turned down the request.
”I absolutely have no qualms at all because there’s an ongoing investigation into the 9-11 attacks, and we don’t want to compromise that investigation,” the president said. – Guardian Unlimited Â