TEL AVIV, June 21: An unprecedented summit between the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem on Tuesday broke up amid bitter arguments and recriminations over continuing violence, yielding few tangible results.
Palestinian officials at the meeting said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began the two-hour summit with a humiliating 20-minute lecture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about his failure to halt militant attacks.
An angry Abbas responded by saying he had done everything possible to bring calm to the region and rejected demands to disarm militant factions.
Although officials said agreement had been reached in principle on a number of issues, Mr Sharon linked any progress to the Palestinians’ ability to ‘dismantle the terrorist infrastructure’ of factions such as Islamic Jihad.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, who also attended the talks at Mr Sharon’s west Jerusalem residence, told a post-summit news conference that ‘none of the issues improved or progressed up to the levels of our people’s expectations’.
“Overall what was presented to us was not convincing or satisfying at all,” Mr Qorei added.
Mr Abbas had been expected to address the news conference, and his absence underlined the impression that the summit had been a failure.
Another Palestinian official said Mr Sharon began the summit with a ‘20-minute lecture that Palestinian efforts in the fight against terrorism were not enough’.
Mr Abbas said he had ‘done everything’ to shore up the truce and that he had ‘no mandate from the people’ to disarm armed Palestinian groups, the source added.
Mr Sharon’s spokesman confirmed that Israel had offered to transfer security control to the Palestinians in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Qalqilya provided the Palestinians act against militants — a proviso that has halted similar transfers in the past.
“We are offering (the transfers) if they will make the necessary security plan,” Raanan Gissin said, saying the Palestinians “know exactly what that means”.
Responsibility for security in both cities should have been transferred several months ago as part of agreements reached at the pair’s previous summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on February 8.
Gissin said Sharon also made clear that he was willing to release more of the 7,000-plus Palestinians held in Israeli prisons but similarly on condition that Abbas’s regime “stop fugitives, put militants under control and prevent terrorist activity.”
“All this is dependent on the situation on the ground,” he said. “It’s a matter of life and death for the Israeli people.”
The sour atmosphere at the summit — the first time that top-level leaders from the two sides had met in the holy city — was in stark contrast to the last meeting, when both men declared an end to hostilities at a summit hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
There was little fanfare this time around, with reporters and photographers kept away from the venue.
Abbas had managed to persuade militant factions to call a de facto ceasefire at the start of the year, but the quiet has been unravelling in recent days.—AFP
