TEL AVIV, May 29: Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon met for talks here on Thursday on a US-backed roadmap, a senior Palestinian official said.
The two premiers, meeting at Sharon’s office on occupied Al Quds, discussed a possible launch of the peace plan ahead of a three-way summit next week in Jordan with US President George Bush, Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath and security chief Mohammed Dahlan were also attending the meeting, Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said.
Both sides are under pressure to show results from the talks, the second such meeting in two weeks between Abbas and Sharon, before their summit with Bush in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba on Wednesday.
Outlining the possible agenda of the talks, Israeli public television said Sharon would ask Abbas to draw up a security plan.
Under the plan, the Palestinians would take security responsibility for areas in northern Gaza and the West Bank in exchange for an Israeli troop withdrawal from those areas.
Sharon was also likely to ask for Abbas to put a halt to anti-Israeli incitement.
On the Palestinian agenda, Abbas was expected to ask for a firm Israeli commitment to a Palestinian state, along with a halt to military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He was also likely to ask Sharon to lift the closure of the territories, release Palestinian prisoners and withdraw troops from the West Bank and Gaza, the television said.
The Haaretz newspaper earlier quoted Israeli government sources as saying Sharon was expected to offer Abbas gradual control of Palestinian towns reoccupied by the army since last June.
PALESTINIAN KILLED: A Palestinian was killed and one other seriously wounded on Thursday when an Israeli tank fired a flechette round at a town in the central Gaza Strip.
According to sources, Mohammed Abu Sbeitan, 21, was killed in Deir al-Balah by the lethal shell which sprays thousands of darts over hundreds of metres, ripping apart anyone in its way.
He was standing in the street at the time, they said.
A 16-year-old boy was seriously wounded by the shell as he sat inside his house, the sources said.
Abu Sbeitan’s death raised to 3,269 the number of people killed since the start of the intifada in Sept 2000.
The Israeli army refused to comment on the incident.But military sources said initial inquiries showed no firing had taken place in the area.
Soldiers had received reports of an explosion, although the cause was unknown.
SHARON WARNING: Israel will never let go of the holy city of Al Quds, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday, just hours before going into a meeting here with his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmud Abbas.
“We will never let go of Jerusalem (Al Quds)! Never!” he warned in a speech for Jerusalem Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the occupied city’s “reunification” when its Arab eastern sector was seized in the 1967 war.
“As the prime minister of Israel, I am true to the honour that has been given me of being the guardian of Jerusalem, reunified for eternity,” he said. “I will respect this solemn duty without compromise.”
Mr Sharon was speaking at an annual ceremony held on Ammunition Hill, the last bastion of the Jordanian defence in the eastern sector and which was captured by Israeli paratroopers in a fierce battle.
JEWISH SETTLEMENT: The municipality of occupied Al Quds submitted a plan to the Israeli interior ministry for a new Jewish settlement near the village of Abu Dis.
The new neighbourhood would be called Kidmat Tziyon, include 230 housing units and two synagogues and cover 100 dunams (10 hectares) on a hill overlooking the Palestinian parliament, the municipality spokesman’s office said.
The new neighbourhood would be built on land seized by Israel from Jordan and annexed in the 1967 war.
The land is partly owned by Jewish American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who acquired large swathes of land in the 1980s and recently contributed to the controversial development of a Jewish enclave in the Arab neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud.
Yariv Oppenheimer, spokesman for the Peace Now movement, condemned the project which he said was “another attempt at preventing any solution on the Jerusalem issue by making a return of land to the Palestinians impossible”.
“Moreover, this is a provocation because Abu Dis is where the Palestinians have their parliament and has been discussed as a possible capital for a future Palestinian state,” he said.—Agencies
