TEL AVIV, July 7: The quartet of Middle East mediators, "sick and tired" of Palestinians' failure to carry out reforms, told their leaders on Wednesday to act soon or risk losing international support and funding, diplomats said.
The envoys from the United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union told Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei in a meeting the international community had had enough of "empty promises" about reform from President Yasser Arafat.
"If security reforms are not done, there will be no (more) international support and no funding from the international community," a senior diplomat close to the talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah said.
In a statement, the quartet said Palestinian Authority action was crucial to salvaging the roadmap. It charts steps to a Palestinian state in territories the Jewish state occupied in the 1967 war.
"Arafat must reduce his dozen or so security forces to three, change all corrupt security bosses, change the interior minister and empower the prime minister," the diplomat said.
"Arafat has done nothing or very little ... There is total disillusion with the Palestinian Authority," he added. "They (envoys) stressed the need to carry out security reforms, that this is the key to everything," Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat said.
The envoys did not meet Mr Arafat, 75, largely confined to his smashed West Bank compound by the Israeli army since 2001. The Quartet demands echoed those presented by Egypt in its offer last month to send security advisers into Gaza as a stabilizing presence before Israel's planned unilateral pullout of settlers from the territory next year.
"We reaffirmed the need for concrete steps on the ground by the Authority, not passivity, to revive the roadmap and seize the opportunity represented by Israel's Gaza withdrawal initiative," the statement said.
Mr Arafat has publicly accepted Egypt's offer, motivated by a desire to prevent a feared militant take over in the territory on its eastern border once Israelis depart, but has made no moves to overhaul his shambolic security apparatus. -Reuters
