June 10, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 9, 1424

TEL AVIV, June 9: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi held talks in Israel on Monday, but Palestinian officials said he would not see Palestinian leaders because of a dispute over whether he should meet Yasser Arafat.

Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas made it clear he had decided not to meet Berlusconi to protest the latter’s refusal to meet Arafat during his three-day tour of the region starting Monday.

“I think my role is to advance, as quickly as possible, the Quartet’s work,” Mr Berlusconi told reporters after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — a reference to the Middle East “roadmap”.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’s office said Mr Berlusconi, whose country is about to take over the EU’s rotating presidency, had decided not to meet Mr Abbas after the new premier insisted he also see Arafat, the Palestinian president.

Italian officials did not comment.

At a news conference, Mr Berlusconi remarked only on Mr Abbas’s pledge to rein in anti-Israel groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“International diplomacy must encourage him (Abbas) to make good on this,” the Italian premier said.

Israel has long favoured the United States as diplomatic mediator, accusing the Europeans of pro-Arab bias.

“The Israeli people have total kinship with the peoples of Europe in terms of religion, culture and politics, and the state of Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” Mr Berlusconi said.

Mr Sharon has avoided receiving foreign leaders whose visits include a meeting with Mr Arafat.

“Mr Berlusconi cancelled his meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas because Abbas insisted the guest also meet with Arafat,” Mr Abbas’s office said in a statement.

Mr Arafat is holed up in his devastated headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

A spokeswoman for the Italian embassy in Tel Aviv said Berlusconi would on Tuesday visit Jordan and Egypt.

VEILED MESSAGE: The refusal by Palestinian leaders to meet Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to scupper plans by Italy — which takes over the EU presidency next month — to host a Middle East peace conference.

It was also seen here as a veiled message to US President George W. Bush — who asked Berlusconi to make the Middle East tour to help the fledgling peace process — that he cannot totally sideline Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Berlusconi’s stance broke with that of EU countries which up to now have resisted US and Israeli pressure and said they would continue contacts with Arafat.

Berlusconi, who heads first to Israel, was due to hold talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon later in the day, then head to Jordan on Tuesday and Cairo on Wednesday.

“Berlusconi will come back from his trip without having met any Palestinian leader, and this does not seem to augur well,” the Palestinian representative in Italy Nemer Hammad said in an interview printed Monday in La Repubblica daily.

The move raised doubts about the value of Berlusconi’s trip, which also comes hard on a new series of bloody attacks in Israel claimed by militant Palestinian groups.

Berlusconi — who backed Washington in the US-led war on Iraq that caused sharp divisions within Europe — made it clear after the G8 summit in France last week that his trip was mandated by Bush, who asked him “to go on the same visit and bring him a report on what has happened since his visit and his efforts.”

The US president was encouraged by his own trip after talks with Sharon and Abbas together in Aqaba, Jordan, Wednesday and with Arab leaders the day before in Cairo.

And Washington said it hoped the latest violence would not derail new initiatives focussed on a “roadmap” for peace — accepted unconditionally by the Palestinians and provisionally by Israel — that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

But Washington also made it clear that Abbas was “our choice” for interlocutor, in the words of US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday, and that Arafat, boycotted for more than a year by both Washington and Israel, was not seen as “useful”.—Reuters / AFP