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Clinton, Arafat Talk Peace As Middle East Burns
by Matthew Lee
WASHINGTON (AFP) – U.S. President Bill Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met here Thursday amid an explosion of Mideast violence including the killing of a PLO military commander by Israel, which Washington said raised "serious issues."
Arafat, speaking to reporters after the meeting, denounced Israel as being to blame for the clashes.
"I am not the one who initiated the violence," he said. "I am not the one who's attacking the Israelis now. My tanks are not sieging Israeli towns."
Arafat did not directly refer to the helicopter attack that killed two women and the head of his Fatah faction's armed militias in the southern West Bank, Hussein Suyef Abeyat.
The State Department said Washington would be looking into the attack, but refused to condemn Abeyat's killing or call it an assassination.
"The incident today does raise serious issues," spokesman Richard Boucher said as Arafat and Clinton met in an effort to bring an end to the six weeks of deadly violence.
"We see some significance [to the killing]," he told reporters. "This is a serious matter, and we want to look into it. We want to know the facts, we want to understand the circumstances."
Israeli officials have said the killing was a targeted attack and Fatah has vowed to retaliate, further threatening desperate U.S. efforts to push the two sides to take steps to end the violence.
Fatah's military leader in the West Bank and two Palestinian women bystanders were killed when Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a vehicle in the village of Beit Sahur carrying Fatah members the army said it wanted for their role in anti-Israeli attacks.
"The Israeli army and security services in the West Bank will continue to take appropriate measures against terrorist targets and will hurt anyone putting the lives of Israeli citizens in danger," the army said in a statement.
The army said the Fatah officials were suspected of involvement in several attacks over the past month in Beit Sahur and other villages near the West Bank town of Bethlehem that claimed the lives of three Israeli soldiers.
Hussein Suyef Abeyad, 37, the leader of Fatah's military wing in the southern West Bank, and two Palestinian women bystanders, were killed in the Israeli helicopter strike on the West Bank village of Beit Sahur.
"This is the beginning of targeting Fatah and we will respond to this action," Fatah West Bank official Hussein al-Sheikh told Voice of Palestine radio.
Asked if Abeyad was involved in attacks as claimed by Israel, Barghouti said: "Yeah, I think [he was] during 40 days we were the victims of the Israeli aggressive attacks and terrorist actions.
"He is one of the Fatah cadres, and as you know, Fatah is leading the Palestinian Authority," he added.
Barghouthi is accused by Israel of stoking the violence over the past six weeks, but he said the Palestinians were waging a "peaceful intifada" against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"We are still the victims of the Israeli aggressive attacks, the closures, the rockets, the tanks and the helicopters. It is not the language between two sides who are going to achieve peace," he added.
White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said Arafat's meeting with Clinton, who is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday, focused on how to break the cycle of violence.
"We continue to be frustrated that the violence continues," Crowley said after the two-hour meeting. "It remains a major focus of our discussions with both sides. Violence serves no one's interest, it remains a dead-end street."
"The best prospect to see a reduction in violence is to meet the obligations that both sides have under the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement," he said, referring to agreements made at last month's Middle East peace summit.
Arafat intended and did raise his demands for an international protection force, sure to be hardened since the killing.
"We have discussed all issues in great detail including an international protection force," Arafat said.
U.S. officials said they were willing to listen to the idea but have publicly discouraged it, noting vehement Israeli opposition, and said they would not support the Palestinian demand for U.N. involvement in any such scheme.
Arafat is due in New York on Friday to see U.N. chief Kofi Annan, where he will again press the issue. Like Clinton, Annan has said that, without Israeli agreement, a U.N. force is not an option.
"We don't believe this is time for new U.N. initiatives," Boucher said. "We think the immediate implementation of the commitments of Sharm el-Sheikh is ... the best way to ensure that the violence subsides."
Nearly 200 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed since the clashes erupted in late September.
Both sides, officials said, needed to do more to make those agreements a reality on the ground, noting the U.S. creation on Tuesday of a fact-finding panel to look into the violence.
Israel and the Palestinians at Sharm el-Sheikh agreed to the commission, but measures the two sides agreed to take themselves have not yet been completed to U.S. satisfaction, officials say.
"It is our view that there are still steps that both sides can take to meet their obligations under the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement," Crowley said.
Before arriving in Washington, Arafat accused Israel of not abiding by the latest agreement he reached with former Israeli premier Shimon Peres last week: to implement the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings and begin to move toward resuming the peace process, on ice since the Camp David summit failed in July.
Barak has made similar accusations against Arafat and the Palestinians.
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