September 9, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1424

ABU DIS (West Bank), Sept 8: Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei, Yasser Arafat’s nominee for prime minister, said on Monday he wanted US and European guarantees of support for peacemaking before accepting the post.

Mr Arafat chose Ahmed Qorei on Sunday to replace Mahmoud Abbas, who had resigned in frustration a day earlier, complaining that the Palestinian president and Israel had obstructed his peace efforts and the United States had not given him enough backing.

Qorei’s credentials as a highly-regarded moderate and an architect of the 1993 interim Oslo peace accords with Israel could endear him to the United States and could raise hopes of salvaging a battered US-led peace plan.

There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was leaving on an official trip to India on Monday. But he has ruled out talks with a Palestinian leadership controlled by Arafat.

Israeli Health Minister Danny Naveh, of Sharon’s rightist Likud party, said Qorei’s nomination would not bring a resumption of dialogue because “the man who is pulling the strings and controlling everything is one person, and it’s Yasser Arafat”.

Mr Qorei, a veteran politician but one who has little grass-roots support among Palestinians, appeared to recognize the difficulties he will face if he takes the job.

“I am not prime minister as yet...I want to see the Americans — what kind of guarantee...they will (give),” he told Reuters.

“I want to see Europe, what kind of guarantees and support...they will (give). I’m not ready to go for a failure. I want to see whether peace is possible or not,” he said in English in his office in the West Bank village of Abu Dis near Jerusalem.

MISSILE STRIKE: Soon after Arafat’s decision on Sunday, Israel launched the latest in a series of missile strikes against Islamic militant groups. Helicopter gunships attacked the home of a member of Hamas’s military wing, wounding 15 people, medical workers said.

The army said the building was used as a weapons arsenal and that ammunition and explosives blew up after the missiles hit.

Arafat’s nomination of Qorei, approved on Sunday by the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Executive Committee and the Fatah faction, came in the midst of a deep political crisis.

Israeli officials said Abbas’s decision to quit was a blow to peace hopes and renewed calls for Arafat’s expulsion. Arafat had appointed Abbas in April under intense international pressure for reform.

The nomination of Qorei, 65, could ease weeks of political confusion in the Palestinian Authority, which has heightened concern that the US-led “road map” leading to peace and a Palestinian state by 2005 may now be beyond saving.

The United States, the key Middle East peace broker, is eager to see a strong prime minister running the Palestinian Authority and controlling its security forces in place of Arafat, whom Washington accuses of fomenting violence. Arafat denies this.

White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Arafat had hindered Abbas in his efforts to control the security forces. She urged the Palestinian Authority to “get an empowered prime minister and let him work”.

The European Union, which helped draft the road map along with Russia and the United Nations, made clear it would accept Qorei.