December 14, 2001	Friday	Ramazan 28, 1422

PARIS, Dec 13: Israel’s Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said on Thursday he did not rule out expelling Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Tunis, and warned that the Palestinian Authority had not yet felt the full weight of Tel Aviv’s wrath after a spate of deadly suicide attacks.

Asked in an interview published in Le Monde newspaper on Thursday about the possibility of sending Arafat back to the place where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was based before the 1993 Oslo accords, he said: “It is a tactical question, a question of political opportunity. We should not exclude this possibility.”

Earlier Israeli Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said he had banned Arafat from leaving the West Bank town of Ramallah after a government decision to cut contacts with the Palestinian leader.

“Today he (Arafat) is already stuck in Ramallah, like a pariah, unable to budge,” Landau, a leading member of the hardline Likud party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said.

He said that other Palestinian political leaders “should return to Tunis” too and that the peace process could wait until “later”.

He warned that the Palestinian Authority had not yet felt the full ire of Israel’s security forces after the recent suicide attacks.

“Up to now Israel has done very little to eradicate terrorism. Our security forces are far from having thrown in their full weight,” he said.

The Palestinian Authority, diplomatically isolated and under unprecedented pressure to jail extremists responsible for a wave of bloody attacks, has said Sharon had launched an “official war” on the Palestinian people.

Palestinian delegate to Paris, Leila Shahid, called on the international community to intervene immediately and send an international protection force to the Palestinian territories to help avoid a “carnage” there.

“If the international community does not intervene immediately to stop Sharon and send an international force to ensure security, there will be carnage, and what you have seen in Bosnia and Kosovo will look like nothing compared to it,” she said on RMC radio.

“Today the last chance we have is that the international community assumes its responsibilities and wakes up and stops this madman, because he is leading the Israeli and Palestinian people towards disaster,” she said, referring to Sharon.

In Damascus, visiting US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said Washington will continue dealing with Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian people, despite Israel’s decision.

France also said it would be a mistake to stop dealing with Arafat.

President Jacques Chirac would seek a statement from a two-day meeting of European Union leaders in Belgium from Friday, calling for a resumption of peace negotiations “without delay and without preconditions”, his spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said.

“We hope for a strong message from the leaders on the subject of the Middle East, because we have to continue making heard the voice of reason, issue a reminder of the principles and t