Qurie Denies Bid to Quit in Reforms Row

18/02/2004| IslamWeb

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie denied yesterday he was thinking about resigning following a heated argument with President Yasser Arafat over reforms. A senior Palestinian official said earlier that Qurie, who first threatened to quit late last year in a power-sharing dispute with Arafat over the formation of a government, told cabinet ministers he was considering stepping down. "Resigning? Why? I am here as the prime minister. I am not thinking about that," Qurie said after a meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin. Describing an encounter between Arafat and Qurie, the official said: "A heated argument took place between them on Saturday following a cabinet decision to undertake security and financial reforms." Another official said Arafat rejected the cabinet move as an infringement on his powers and "an angry Abu Ala (Qurie) told ministers ... that he wants to resign and that he's thinking of quitting because he can't go on like this anymore". Qurie, meanwhile, told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that the West Bank fence threatened the Middle East peace process and the creation of a promised Palestinian state. He also said his chief of staff would tomorrow meet his opposite number in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office to try to arrange a long-awaited summit. Plans to evacuate Jewish settlers from parts of the Palestinian territories suffered a double blow as Israeli MPs approved $20 million (BD7.56m) to develop settlements and a cabinet minister said he would draft a bill to prevent the army from carrying out evacuations. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a conference on Israel and the European Union (EU) that his country would "upgrade" its relation with the enlarged EU but wanted to see a "more balanced approach" to its conflict with the Palestinians. Justice Minister Yousef Lapid said Israel would have gained more from attending next week's World Court hearings on its West Bank barrier than by deciding to stay away. The Hague-based International Court of Justice begins hearings on February 23 to rule on the legality of the obstacle of wire and concrete that Israel says keeps out bombers, but Palestinians call it a land grab. In Gaza, thousands of Palestinian labourers held a sit-in protest at the main border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, a day after a man died in a queue waiting for security checks for workers entering Israel. **PHOTO CAPTION*** An Israeli soldier (L) punches a Palestinian youth trying to pass from the West Bank to Jerusalem, near the Kubsa checkpoint, February 17, 2004. (REUTERS/Mahfouz Abu Turk)