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Tenet's Mideast Security Plan Revealed
JERUSALEM, June 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli public television announced Saturday the main points of a U.S. document aimed at strengthening a fragile ceasefire, to which Israel and the Palestinians are expected to give a response Sunday.
CIA chief George Tenet, who is touring the region in an attempt to revive security meetings, submitted the document to the two parties Friday.
Both sides will gather again on Sunday for their next security meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
The main recommendations of the "Tenet document" for the Palestinians included the immediate arrest of occupation resistance activists from the Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements and the confiscation of mortars in the autonomous Palestinian territories.
Tenets also recommended a halt to inciting of violence and to attacks against Jewish settlements (in the West Bank and Gaza Strip).
Tenet, the TV said, wants the Israelis to carry out a halt to attacks against autonomous Palestinian sectors, the withdrawal of Israeli forces back to pre-intifada (September 28) positions and reduce their minimum level measures harming people and goods (in the Palestinian territories).
The acceptance of these conditions by the Israelis and the Palestinians would allow a "total ceasefire", the television said, quoting the "Tenet document".
Meanwhile Israel and the Palestinians Saturday prepared their answers to the U.S. proposals after tense security talks with the CIA chief the previous day.
On top of the U.S. drive, United Nations chief Kofi Annan announced he would embark on a week-long trip to the Middle East and European Union envoys were due to arrive Saturday evening to add their voices to the mix in persuading the two sides to build on a brittle ceasefire and start talking again.
Those proposals include a "six-week calming-down period," to be followed by confidence-building measures, a top Israeli official told the French news agency AFP.
Sporadic violence has continued despite the flimsy Israeli-Palestinian truce with another 16 Palestinians shot Saturday by the Israeli army in the West Bank and Palestinian mortar bombs hitting Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip leaving a Thai laborer lightly injured, sources of both sides said.
The U.S. document presented at the meeting "includes a calendar for implementing the Mitchell committee report on the violence," a senior Israeli official told AFP, asking not to be identified.
The official said Israel "basically agrees with this plan and demands the Palestinian ceasefire to be effective, which it isn't at the moment."
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, were expected to arrive in the region Saturday for a two-day visit.
The EU has provided Arafat with "a team of advisers to help him respect the ceasefire," with senior Palestinian officials describing them as the "observers" they have long demanded and claiming the move as a victory.
Israel however does not recognize the team, which has set up offices in the hotspots of Beit Jala in the West Bank and Rafah in the Gaza Strip, as observers.
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