"Attacks on Israel were undertaken without Yasser Arafat's knowledge"
Привeтствую
Aй-яй-яй, кaк интeрeсно:
"Peres Calls Arafat a Peace Partner" -- ну это, положим, нe новость, но
"Palestinian attacks on Israel were undertaken without Yasser Arafat's knowledge, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is offering the Palestinians hopes for concessions and an overall peace accord as he holds talks with the Bush administration.
-- Шо, опять? Стaрый выморозок.
"Peres' meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) on Wednesday and President Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday could set the stage for a resumption of negotiations - provided seven weeks of violence ends.
Peres, who is the architect of agreements with the Palestinians that have given them control of 40 percent of the West Bank and most of Gaza, took a dovish stance on virtually all fronts before his meetings with Powell and Bush.
Describing Arafat as a peace partner, Peres said Israel ``will be ready to make painful compromises'' once negotiations with the Palestinians are resumed. The phrase echoed former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (news - web sites)'s frequent references to territorial and other concessions he offered Arafat while saying they would be painful to the Israeli public.
The peace talks broke down, nonetheless, and Israeli voters elected a hardline prime minister, Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), who gave Peres the post of foreign minister in a unity government.
His visit to Washington coincides with a noticeable shift in the Bush administration's hands-off policy and its focus on ending the violence to diplomatic efforts to also restart negotiations.
``We cannot solve anything with force,'' Peres said Tuesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a private research group.
Taking a soft line, Peres said no new Jewish settlements would be built on the West Bank or in Gaza and that while Israel would open talks with a proposal for an extended interim accord, it would not rule out negotiating an overall agreement.
``We want to help the Palestinians,'' Peres said. ``The stronger they will be, the better partner they will be.''
Sharon's government has blamed Arafat for deadly attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. But Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning architect of the Oslo accords that set the stage for Israeli pullbacks on the West Bank, said ``some dissident groups and some forces under Arafat participated in the killings without the knowledge of Arafat.''
``Arafat is our partner,'' Peres said. ``He was elected. ... We don't demonize the Palestinians, who have gone through tragedies.''
Peres reiterated a series of concessions the government was prepared to make - unilaterally, he said - designed to permit Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza to go freely to and from their jobs in Israel. He said the territories should be connected with a railroad running on existing tracks.
``There should be no collective punishment,'' he said. ``We feel civilians should not suffer.''
Peres also reiterated that an understanding, but not an agreement, had been reached with the Palestinians to end the fighting. He said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites)'s announcement last weekend of an agreement was based on a mistake by an interpreter.
Earlier, in New York, Peres said his meeting with Powell would focus on ``how to achieve an effective cease-fire. Without American involvement, it cannot work.''
Meanwhile, the violence continued. A Jewish settler, like his father before him, was slain in ambush on a road on the West Bank and two Palestinians were killed, one in a clash with Israeli troops in Gaza, the other by a masked assailant.
Arafat said Tuesday he hoped to reach a truce agreement with Israel but talks so far ``did not lead to any results.''
``We wish there would be an agreement,'' Arafat told state-run Jordan Television before beginning talks in Amman with Jordan's King Abdullah II. ``We wish there would be an end to the military escalation and to the violence.''
