United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan met Ariel Sharon in Ramallah on Sunday, just after Israel offered to the Palestinian Authorities the opportunity to leave and dismantle 24 illegal outposts in the West Bank.
Abbas previously said he hopes that every Palestinian faction would join the general ceasefire during the conference scheduled this week in Cairo.
Mr.Annan already had a meeting with Abu Mazen early in February in Sharm el-Sheik on the Red Sea, but on that occasion Palestinian groups did not officially join the truce. However, the towns of Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Jericho, Bethlehem and Ramallah decided to be re-assigned to the Palestinian Authorities.
When a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Tel Aviv disco killing 4 people and wounding 50, it serioulsy compromised the situation. Even if the Islamic Jihad groups declared themselves innocent, hopes for a ceasfire were quickly disappointed after that event.
Abbas seems to be more optimistic this time, as he said on TV news that the forthcoming meeting in Cairo was going to be very important. "God willing, we will go there to declare a ceasefire... for the sake of giving the peace process a chance to begin and to return to its normal path," said the Palestinian leader.
Annan and Abbas were supposed to talk about the “road map”plan pushed by the United States and recently held in larger consideration by international relations since the death of Yassser Arafat, considered by many to be the cause of an impossible dialogue with the Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon.
A main point of the discussion was the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are Palestinian areas under the military occupation of Israel that the United Nations claims to be illegal. Israel invaded this area during the “Six Day War” in 1967. There are now approximately 190,000 Israeli settlers living among more than two million Palestinians.
Abbas does not want the pullback to be fully organized and controlloed by the Israeli authorities themselves and would prefer to coordinate every step taken in this area, in close contact with his counterpart in Israel and with the Islamist jihad movements and their desires for revenge.
Sharon already decided to free many of the Palestinan political prisoners in the Israeli jails who were not involved in any attack against his country.
In his meeting on Monday with Kofi Annan, the Israeli leader pointed out the fact that a complete redeployment of his troops also depends on the Palestinian resistance fighters’ decision of a complete ceasfire and violence stop. This indirectly puts responsibilities for the attacks organized by these movements on the Palestinian authorities. “Without genuine action by the Palestinians against terrorism, it will be unable to move anything forward,” said the Israeli leader.
The peace plan strongly favored by Abbas is supposed to completely establish a Palestinian state. Israeli withdrawal from the five towns is intended to fulfill a request of a total control above this area by the authorities and is a crucial point of the “road map” sponsored by the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union.
There have already been some disagreements between the two countries and this is the reason why Israel has delayed dismantling the unhathorized settlements in the five towns. To try to resolve this complicated issue, the Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is supposed to meet Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, in the next few days. ”Dismantling these unauthorized settlements is a part of the Israeli commitment under the road map that was approved by the government,” said Sharon.
Also on BloggerNews-
http://www.legendgames.net/showstory.asp?page=blognews/stories/WN0000045.txt http://www.middleeastdaily.com/p/d8/9b9d0ba62a8019.html?id=WNATfa28390ad180200b02552344bf5ff81d
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ad01nsf1u_H4&refer=top_world_news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4346395.stm
Il Romanaccio at 1:05 PM
