Title: Message
UN Head Predicts 'Full
Fledged War' in Middle East
By
Jim Burns
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
February 22,
2002
(CNSNews.com) - In a brief, blunt speech, United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Thursday that the Palestinian conflict could
degenerate into a full-fledged war. He urged the U.N. Security Council to work
with both sides to resolve the conflict.
"We are nearing the edge of the
abyss," Annan cautioned. With more than 60 people killed over the past week,
violence threatened to escalate even further, he said.
"Particularly
alarming is the growing belief, among both Palestinians and Israelis, that there
can be no negotiated solution to the conflict," said Annan.
Annan called
on the Security Council to take action now.
"The lack of mutual
confidence between the two sides makes a third-party role essential. I truly
believe that it is imperative for the Security Council and the wider
international community to work in a concerted manner with the parties toward a
just, lasting and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the conflict in the
Middle East," Annan said.
The key problems to reaching a settlement,
Annan thinks, are "occupation, security and the need to end violence including
terrorism; and the economic deprivation and suffering."
Annan said he
personally, along with several U.N. representatives, have been in close contact
with leaders on both sides, and he called for intensified
negotiations.
"The outlook is bleak, but the present course of events is
not irreversible. Let us do everything in our power to persuade the parties to
pull back from the brink, and return to the high road," said Annan.
But
in a nationwide television address, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called
for unity among his people and vowed to dismantle what he called the "terrorist
framework" operating in the Palestinian territories.
Sharon said the
Israelis had decided to set up buffer zones along the border with the
territories.
In the same address, Sharon said his aim was total peace
with the Palestinians but on two conditions: a ceasefire with complete
Palestinian disarmament, to be followed at a later time by a final drawing up of
borders.
Before Sharon's speech, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat renewed
a call for a Palestinian ceasefire that he originally made in
December.
