Israel expects ‘some kind of decision’: Bush-Sharon-Abbas talks next week
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, May 28: President George W. Bush will meet the Israeli and Palestinian leaders next week in Jordan, the White House announced on Wednesday.
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat will not be invited to the summit at the Jordanian Red Sea port city of Aquaba, the announcement said.
The new White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, acknowledged that the so-called roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians has had setbacks but said that President Bush hoped to “focus on moving forward.”
The president’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, he said, would further boost the hopes for peace.
The spokesman said Mr Bush would also go separately to Egypt next week to meet Arab leaders, and to the headquarters of the US Central Command in Qatar to meet troops.
Although the White House has not yet announced a date for the meeting, senior US officials have indicated that it will be on Tuesday, a day after Mr Bush meets Arab leaders in Egypt.
Mr Bush will leave Washington on Friday on a trip that will also take him to Poland,Russia and France.
The White House is playing down expectations for the meeting with Mr Abbas and Mr Sharon, saying they will not like to make any prediction.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, however, said concrete results could be expected from the summit. “The president would not bother coming all the way out here to leave without a decision of some kind,” he told Israel TV.
Observers say the decision to keep Mr Arafat out is intended to snub the Palestinian leader who said on Tuesday that he, not his new prime minister, was in charge of peace talks.
Mr Sharon refuses to talk to Mr Arafat.
The Palestinian leadership, however, wishes to keep Mr Arafat involved. On Tuesday, Mr Arafat presided over a meeting of the PLO executive, which discussed Israeli peace proposals and also approved a proposed meeting between Mr Abbas and Mr Sharon on Wednesday.
The announcement gave the impression that Mr Abbas sought Mr Arafat’s blessing for his meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
Israel reacted angrily. “There will be no meeting (on) Wednesday,” said a spokesman for the Israeli government after the Abbas-Arafat meeting.
Mr Abbas announced that the meeting would “most likely” take place on Thursday. “But at this point in time it has not been confirmed,” he added.
Mr Sharon and Mr Abbas first met on May 17, which was also the first Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting since violence erupted in September 2000.
Israel conditionally accepted the peace plan on Sunday, a month after the Palestinians approved the formula and insisted that it be implemented unchanged.
But the Sharon government has raised 14 reservations about the plan, including a demand that the United States manage the monitoring of compliance with the agreement.
Commenting on next week’s summit in Jordan, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that “the meeting would certainly demonstrate the US commitment to moving forward with the peace process.”
“It would give both leaders, Prime Minister Sharon and Prime Minister Abbas, an opportunity to express their views directly to the President (Bush).”
The meeting, he said, would also give “some hope and inspiration to the people of the region that we are now moving forward on the roadmap toward the vision that the president had.”
