April 5, 2002	Friday	Muharram 21, 1423

TEL AVIV, April 4: A high-level EU delegation flew in on Thursday to try to tackle a tidal wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence but ran into trouble even before it arrived, with Israel blocking all access to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians refusing to parley without their leader.

Israel said there was no question of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique breaking Arafat’s isolated captivity inside what remains of his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.

“The cabinet decided yesterday (Wednesday) that the decision taken some days ago that the Chairman should be isolated will remain since (Arafat), as the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is responsible for terrorist actions,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said before the EU mission’s arrival.

An Israeli official amplified that Israel would “not permit a European delegation to break the isolation which we have imposed on Arafat”.

“The Europeans’ only aim is to provide Arafat with a public platform and that we will not allow,” he added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who held talks with the two Spanish envoys in Tel Aviv, said he favoured a meeting between Arafat and US special envoy Anthony Zinni, but stuck to the government line on banning the Europeans going in.

“The official position is that the cabinet decided not to allow a meeting ... because we want to keep him isolated,” he told reporters.

Solana hit back that the ban on allowing them to meet Arafat was “big mistake.”

“We insist that everybody will have the possibility to speak with everybody else,” said Pique. “To meet Arafat is not an objective in itself. We are here to help, we have to see how to proceed to implement the UN resolution.”

The UN Security Council on Saturday passed Resolution 1402, calling for an immediate ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories.

Israel brushed it aside, arguing that the sequencing of the resolution stipulated a ceasefire first and a pullback only after a truce had been declared.

The Palestinians were furious at Israel’s latest step to cut off their leader, accused by the Jewish state of using the media to incite attack on Israel, and branded an “enemy of the free world” by Sharon.

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said if the Europeans could not meet with Arafat then they would not have the chance to meet with any Palestinians.

“If they do not meet with Arafat, no Palestinian official will meet with them,” he said.

Erakat said the United States, Russia and Europe had to press Sharon to end Arafat’s isolation in his surrounded offices, where he is trapped with around 100 aides, guards and foreign supporters and given rations at Israel’s whim.

“Whether we meet or not is now irrelevant if they cannot convince Sharon” to end Arafat’s isolation, he said.

The Palestinian leadership urged the Europeans not to meet Sharon if they could not also reach Arafat.

The European Union is seen by many right-wing ministers in Sharon’s coalition gov