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U.S. Envoy Meets Arafat, Sharon
JERUSALEM, May 28 (News Agencies) - U.S. Mideast envoy William Burns met both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a second time Monday looking for peace while violence continued.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer were also taking part in the meeting with Sharon as the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem, Israeli radio said.
Burns has already met twice with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the second meeting being held in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Monday, and an official from Sharon's office said that Burns would give him "Yasser Arafat's reply to Israeli ceasefire proposals."
Burns is in the Middle East to study ways of putting the recommendations of the Mitchell commission into effect, and started separate talks with Arafat and Sharon as soon as he arrived in the region.
However, wide differences remain, particularly over which should come first: the Mitchell report's call for a halt to violence or a freeze in Israeli settlements.
Meanwhile, despite Israel's disputed unilateral ceasefire, at least four people were wounded, including one seriously, when Israeli forces opened fire Monday on Palestinian homes in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said.
And on Monday evening Israeli tanks shelled Salaam neighborhood in Rafah, wounding two boys, aged 12 and 18, and a 26-year-old woman, medical and security sources said.
While from the other side, the spokesman in Gaza for the Islamic Jihad movement, Abdallah Shami, said his group would pursue its attacks "deep inside Israel".
"We will continue carrying out our martyr attacks deep inside Israel, which will topple [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon," Shami told a rally of 1,000 university students in Gaza City.
Back on the diplomatic front, Arafat was due in Moscow late Monday for a new round of talks with President Vladimir Putin, the Russian foreign ministry said.
The chief Palestinian representative in Moscow said Arafat would ask Putin for "advice" on ways to finding a solution to the conflict.
In Stockholm, which currently chairs the 15-nation European Union, a spokeswoman said Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson would meet Arafat in Copenhagen this Wednesday and Sharon in Brussels on June 6th.
The Palestinian leader is to meet European Union and parliament officials Thursday in Brussels, a European Commission spokesman said Monday in the Belgian capital.
The Swedish foreign ministry said that Arafat and Sharon had requested the meetings ahead of an EU summit in Gothenburg next month.
Meanwhile, the German government announced Sharon would begin his tour of European capitals with a three-day visit to Germany beginning June 4th.
In Paris on Monday, the visiting Lebanese president Emile Lahoud slammed what he called "the extremist and aggressive policies of the Israeli government" at a dinner held in his honor in French President Jacques Chirac's residence.
Israel "wants to get out of its international obligations," he charged, urging a rethink of the strategies and methods currently being used to try and impose peace on the troubled Middle East.
"We think that a clear and courageous position from the international community reminding Israel of its obligations and the requirements of peace ... would likely force Israel to revise its choices and to maybe resume negotiations."
In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called Monday for a fight to liberate Arab territories occupied by Israel, after a meeting with Pope Shenuda III, the patriarch of Eygpt's Christian Copt community.
Pope Shenuda supports the Palestinian cause and has forbidden Egypt's Copts from going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so long as it is controlled by Israel.
Also on the subject of Jerusalem, Egypt's grand mufti warned Monday that rebuilding a Jewish temple on the site of Islam's third holiest place, the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary in the city, could spark World War III.
"That cannot happen," Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel told journalists in response to a question on Egyptian media reports that Israel intends to build a temple there.
"If it happens, Arabs and Muslims will not allow it and it could lead to a third world war breaking out," he said.
The Noble Sanctuary, home to the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock and where the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) traveled to heaven, stands on the site of the first and second Jewish temples in history.
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