September 4, 2003	Thursday	Rajab 6, 1424

WASHINGTON, Sept 3: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said on Tuesday that the US-backed roadmap was dead because of Israeli aggression.

“The roadmap is dead, but only because of Israeli military aggression in recent weeks,” he said in an off-camera interview with CNN, according to the network’s website.

The interview took place in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed the remarks, declining even to respond to them.

“We didn’t deal with Yasser Arafat when we were putting the roadmap together,” Mr Powell told reporters in Washington. “So his comments don’t mean a whole lot to me and I’m not responding to them in any way.”

Mr Arafat also told CNN that the United States had let the plan die.

The roadmap was drafted by US, UN, EU and Russian officials.

Yasser Arafat told CNN that US preoccupation with Iraq and upcoming presidential elections got in the way of assuring implementation of the roadmap.

He also said that a split between him and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been exaggerated.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said earlier in the day that the government was to consider expelling Mr Arafat as he was obstructing the peace process.

“Arafat is a very major obstacle for (Palestinian prime minister) Mahmud Abbas and for the whole political process,” Mr Mofaz told military radio.

“We made a historic mistake by not expelling him two years ago but we are going to address this issue in the short-term, without doubt before the end of the year.”

Mr Arafat has been effectively confined to his headquarters in Ramallah by the Israali army for the past 20 months.

According to media reports, the majority of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet is in favour of expelling Arafat, but the security services have warned that he could have more of a “capacity for nuisance” in exile.

In recent weeks, the United States has ramped up pressure on Mr Arafat to turn over the entire Palestinian security apparatus to Mr Abbas in order to rein in militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Privately, US State Department officials sought clarification from Israel over its defense minister’s threat to expel Arafat.

The officials said they wanted to know whether Mr Mofaz had been speaking personally or was reflecting the view of Sharon’s government when he made the threat.

RIYADH, MOSCOW CONTEST CLAIM: Russia and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday called for the full implementation of the roadmap in the Middle East, countering the claim by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that the plan is dead.

The internationally-backed roadmap is “a unique means of seeking a way out of the crisis and finding a settlement that corresponds to the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in talks with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al Faisal.

Questioned by reporters on Mr Arafat’s comments that the plan was dead, he said Russia was “firmly for the roadmap’s implementation”.—AFP