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E.U. Launches New Peace Initiative |
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By Bradley Burston MADRID, Apr 24, 2002 -- Foreign Ministers of the European Union and ten southern Mediterranean states ended two days of talks yesterday with the EU announcing plans to send another peace mission to the Middle East as the Israeli barbarism in the Jenin refugee camps began to unfold. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said the EU team including European security chief Javier Solana was planning to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The team will leave for Tel Aviv this morning. The mission signaled a new EU contribution to international efforts to end continuing Israeli-Palestinian tensions, said Pique. The team will also include special EU Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres earlier invited the EU to send another peace mission to the region, saying the team would have "the same freedom of movement and action" as US Secretary of State Colin Powell. An EU mission to Israel earlier this month led by Solana and including Pique was refused permission to meet Arafat. Meanwhile, some 600 homes were destroyed and 200 made uninhabitable during the Israeli offensive on the refugee camp, according to a preliminary assessment released yesterday by a group of aid agencies in the area. In Jerusalem,US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Affairs William Burns was quoted by a US diplomat as saying yesterday the United States wants Israel to withdraw from all autonomous Palestinian zones that it is now occupying. During a one-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Burns said Washington wants "an immediate (Israeli) withdrawal from all the zones" now reoccupied, principally the West Bank town of Bethlehem and the area around the Ramallah headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Sharon told Burns the army would withdraw at the "appropriate time" after completing its task, the source said. In Washington, diplomats and officials said the United States may host talks with Russia, the United Nations and the European Union in Washington in early May on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The diplomats said the meeting could be on May 2. In its ongoing offensive, Israeli Army arrested a local leader of the Islamic Jihad along with 29 other suspected activists from across villages surrounding Bethlehem. The army arrested nine suspected Palestinian activists including Jamal Hamamra, a leader of Islamic Jihad, in the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem, witnesses said. Another nine Palestinians were arrested in the village of Battir and five in El Khadr, both west of Bethlehem, witnesses said. The army said earlier it had arrested 26 Palestinians in the West Bank overnight on suspicion of "terrorist activities", while an AFP correspondent saw four more picked up. Israeli forces took over the village of Wadi Salka in the southern Gaza Strip early yesterday, opening fire and bulldozing a position of the Palestinian national security services, the village mayor said. Tanks, armored cars and army bulldozers moved more than a kilometer into the Palestinian-run village in the early hours yesterday, opening fire and destroying the security position, Mayor Yusef Abu Ajjin told AFP. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Villagers stayed in their homes, too scared to go outside, Ajjin said. The Israeli Army yesterday conducted house-to-house searches in the Palestinian village of Fayasel, 20 km north of Jericho on the West Bank, the village mayor said. The army declared the village a "closed military zone" before moving in. The soldiers, with camouflage paint on their faces, searched for two hours through the 140 houses in the village of 800 residents. In Ramallah, a powerful explosion was heard in a building next door to the besieged Ramallah headquarters of President Arafat yesterday, officials inside the Palestinian leader's office told AFP by telephone. The blast appeared to come from inside a building belonging to Arafat's Force 17 presidential guard, located some 20 meters from the office where Arafat is penned up with aides, security guards and international activists acting as a "human shield" for the Palestinian leader. In London, Amnesty International expressed concern yesterday that a UN team investigating the Israeli Army's assault on the Jenin refugee camp might not have the authority and the resources to do its job. In a statement, Amnesty said that if the team did not have a proper mandate, it should be seen as only "a first step toward the prompt creation of a full-scale independent, international commission of inquiry." It said, "unless the team has a clear mandate, powers and all necessary resources to thoroughly investigate alleged abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law, it will be extremely difficult to conduct an authoritative inquiry." Amnesty delegates who had just returned from Jenin "found credible evidence of serious breaches of human rights and humanitarian law," it said "These include unlawful killings, excessive use of lethal force and failure to give civilians warning before attacks by helicopters," it added. Amnesty called on the UN to ensure that the fact-finding team, headed by Finland's former President Martti Ahtisaari, would have adequate numbers of criminal investigators, forensic and ballistic experts and experts in human rights law. In Washington, US President George W. Bush yesterday urged the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to halt the Middle East violence and said this was the "only way for there to be lasting peace, for there to be two states living side by side at peace with each other". Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world all had responsibilities in ending the conflict, Bush said during a White House meeting with King Mohammed of Morocco. Bush urged Arafat to prevent more attacks, and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon to keep pulling troops out of the Palestinian-controlled West Bank The foreign ministers of Turkey and Greece are to hold separate talks tomorrow with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a Turkish official said yesterday. Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem and his Greek counterpart George Papandreou were also expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during their joint mission, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz told Reuters. Greece and Turkey hope to bring a new perspective to the Middle East impasse that has so far frustrated US and European Union diplomatic efforts to end the ongoing violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Cem and Papandreou will meet Arafat at his besieged compound in Ramallah tomorrow, Dirioz said. © Arab News, 2002. All rights reserved. Distributed in partnership with Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net). |
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