RAMALLAH, April 27: Palestinian prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday he would not visit foreign capitals to discuss peace moves until Israel allowed President Yasser Arafat to travel freely again.
Analysts say Abbas fears that accepting a White House invitation would make him look like a US lackey in Palestinian eyes unless Israel stops trying to isolate Arafat. Washington, Israel’s key ally, wants the veteran president sidelined.
US President George W. Bush is due to unveil a “roadmap” shortly, aimed at reviving negotiations after two and a half years of bloodshed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, and Abbas’s stand may delay such talks.
“I will not travel anywhere before Israel lifts a siege on President Arafat so that we can get a guarantee he will be able to go abroad and come back freely without Israeli objection,” Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told Reuters.
The right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Arafat is free to leave his Ramallah base and go abroad but it will not guarantee to let him return.
It also put Abbas on notice that he should not expect any significant Israeli confidence-building measures, such as troop pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or release of Palestinian prisoners immediately after taking office.
A senior government source said Sharon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz decided in consultations on Sunday that such moves would not take place until Abbas demonstrated he was waging a “serious fight against terrorism”, including the arrest, interrogation and trial of Palestinian militants.
Arafat appointed his long-time associate as the Palestinians’ first prime minister under international pressure for democratic reforms seen as critical to peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Israeli forces besieged and partly demolished Arafat’s West Bank compound last year after a spate of suicide bombings by militants that Israel and the US say have been incited and funded by the Palestinian president throughout the uprising.
Arafat denies fomenting violence and has repeatedly denounced suicide attacks by militants of late.
The Bush administration says it will have nothing more to do with him and will regard Abbas as the Palestinian leader in future international relations.
But Arafat preserved his grip on powerful national security organs despite bending to international pressure to name a premier devoted to democratic reform. Analysts say his influence on Palestinian peacemaking will remain weighty, if not decisive.
Abbas, a secretive former peace negotiator whose opposition to violence has won praise from Bush, is esteemed abroad but has little personal support among ordinary Palestinians.
By contrast Arafat, the icon of Palestinian nationalism since the 1960s, still tops Palestinian opinion polls in spite of popular demand for democratisation and an end to corruption.
European Union, Russian and UN leaders involved in drafting the “roadmap” to peace remain in contact with Arafat.
Washington says it will release the plan as soon as the Palestinian legislature confirms the new cabinet agreed between Abbas and Arafat, a step expected this week.
The roadmap envisages steps by both sides, including an end to Palestinian militant attacks and a freeze on Jewish settlement-building on territory claimed by Palestinians, leading to a Palestinian state by 2005.
Bush said on Thursday he expected the Middle East peace process to “accelerate, and hopefully greatly”, and that he would invite Abbas but not Arafat to the White House.
“I looked at the history of Mr Arafat,” Bush said in a US television interview. “And I believe Abu Mazen is a man dedicated to peace and I look forward to working with him for the two-state solution.”—Reuters
