Powell Appoints Sharon Judge And Executioner

28/03/2001| IslamWeb

US Secretary State Colin Powell meets Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Thursday hoping to build on the fragile ceasefire agreed two weeks ago without, according to observers, putting too much pressure on the two sides.
Powell will hold talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah, before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his residence in the evening.

After he began his three-day tour in Egypt on Wednesday, Powell said it would be up to the two groups, and in particular Sharon, to decide when the bloodshed had diminished enough to move ahead with the new peace plan.
"It's the parties that will have to decide whether there is... an adequate level of quiet and lack of violence in order to move forward, and that means Prime Minister Sharon," Powell said after meeting President Hosni Mubarak.
"At the end of the day it's Mr. Sharon that will make that judgement," he said.
The two sides agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the US CIA director George Tenet on June 13, but they have accused each other of breaking it since then.
Israel has repeatedly said all violence must stop before moving into the next phase of the peace plan overseen by former US senator George Mitchell, which calls for a cooling-off period followed by confidence-building measures.
Those measures include a freeze on expanding Israeli settlements, which Sharon has so far rejected, as well as further Palestinian steps to stop any bomb attacks and keep a lid on the violence.
In comments to Israeli television from Washington Wednesday, Sharon repeated his insistence that what he calls violence and the rest of the world except the United Sates call Resistance, end completely before the peace process advances.
"We want violence to end one hundred percent and not just one hundred percent efforts to end the violence," he told the television.
"I have committed myself to avoid war," he claimed. "There will not be war, there will not be escalation, nor slippage."
And mirroring Powell's comments, Sharon expressed confidence that the United States would not try to impose its views on Israel in its bid to relaunch the peace process.
"The Americans do not want to try to impose their point of view, and I consider that by demanding that violence stop completely, we have adopted the most realistic attitude for reaching peace," he claimed.
Nine Palestinians and six Israelis have been killed since the truce came into effect two weeks ago.
But there has been relative calm since Monday, when the Israeli army declared a curfew in the West Bank town of Hebron after seven Israelis and 10 Palestinians were wounded in exchanges of gunfire there.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Ereakat said his side would push hard to restart the peace process when it met with Powell.
"We have only one demand to submit to Powell, that is to establish a calendar defining the stages in the application of the (Mitchell) report," Erakat said.
"Sharon does not have the right to dictate to us his calendar nor his conditions. The United States, the European Union, the Arab world, the Palestinian Authority and Israel have said 'yes' to the report, and it is time to implement it," he said.

As Powell arrived in the Territories, Israeli and Palestinian security officials resumed talks late Wednesday aimed at resolving outstanding questions about the ceasefire, a Palestinian security official told AFP.
The meeting in Tel Aviv, held with US representation, was the first between them since June 20. Resumption of security cooperation was one of the elements laid down in the accord.
Powell travels to Jordan to meet King Abdullah on Friday and will stop off in Paris on the way home to visit Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who is often critical of US policies.

Sharon has cast doubt on Powell's chances of success, but his so-called dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, was more up-beat.
``I think with effort and patience it is possible to bridge (the gaps),'' Peres said. ``I don't think that any of us have a better alternative and all of us believe if the Mitchell plan will collapse we will be left without an alternative.'' Powell will have to resolve deep divisions between Israel and the Palestinians over when the Mitchell blueprint takes effect and the nature of a Jewish settlement freeze it mandates.
Palestinians say the Mitchell report's call for a freeze of all settlement activity -- including building for ``natural growth'' -- must be implemented in full, within six weeks, even if hostilities have not ceased entirely. ``The total insistence on a total cessation of the terror -- this is the only realistic approach to attain peace. It is not an obstacle on the path to peace, but quite the contrary.''
A Palestinian document which will be presented to Powell on Thursday accuses Israel of using ``unattainable and unnecessary'' demands for a complete end to violence to delay implementing its part of the Mitchell report, especially on settlements.
It also rejects Israeli ``loop-holes'' to find a compromise over the freeze of Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law.
Some 200,000 settlers live in 145 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and Palestinians want for a future state.
Under interim peace deals, the fate of the settlements will be resolved in negotiations for a final treaty.
Palestinian negotiator Hassan Asfour said Arafat would tell Powell: ``We will not allow any misinterpretation of the Mitchell report despite our declared reservations.''
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PHOTO CAPTION

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell(L) walks with his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel June 27, 2001. Powell is holding talks across the Middle East on a U.S. plan for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking amid signs of a rift with Israel over a shaky American-brokered cease-fire. (Natalie Behring/Reuters)
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