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Powell Says Mideast Decisions in Sharon's Hand
JERUSALEM, June 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said after meeting President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt Wednesday that it was up to Israel's ultra-rightist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to decide when the violence had diminished enough to move ahead with an internationally backed truce plan.
"It's the parties that will have to decide whether there is ... an adequate level of quiet and lack of violence in order to move forward, and that means Prime Minister Sharon," Powell said.
"At the end of the day it's Mr. Sharon that will make that judgment," he said.
"What we are looking at now is for a period of quiet where the violence goes down in a way that people can have confidence in moving forward," Powell said.
Powell arrived here Wednesday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on holding together a shaky ceasefire and getting the two sides back to the negotiating table.
He will meet separately Thursday with Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat as part of a whirlwind regional tour aimed at shoring up the fragile June 13 truce accord brokered by the United States.
Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush, at a White House meeting on Tuesday, differed on whether there had to be a total end to the violence before moving forward, as Israel has been demanding.
The Palestinians have repeatedly said all violence on Israel's part on the ground must stop before moving into the next phase of the plan overseen by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, which calls for a cooling-off period followed by confidence-building measures.
Those measures include a freeze on new construction in Israeli settlements - illegal under international law - which Sharon has thus far rejected, as well as further Palestinian steps to halt occupation resistance operations.
In comments to Israeli television from Washington Wednesday, Sharon repeated his demanded that violence end completely before the peace process advances. He mentioned nothing about Israel's violence against the Palestinians.
"We want violence to end one hundred percent and not just one hundred percent efforts to end the violence," he said.
"I have committed myself to avoid war," he went on. "There will not be war, there will not be escalation, nor slippage."
And mirroring Powell's comments, Sharon expressed confidence that the United States would not try to impose its views on Israel in its bid to re-launch the peace process.
"The Americans do not want to try to impose their point of view, and I consider that by demanding that violence stop completely, we have adopted the most realistic attitude for reaching peace," he said.
Nine Palestinians and six Israelis have been killed since the truce came into effect two weeks ago.
But the situation on the ground has been fairly quiet since Monday, when the Israeli occupation army declared a curfew in the West Bank town of Hebron after seven Israelis and 10 Palestinians were wounded in exchanges of gunfire there.
On Wednesday, the Israeli occupation army slapped a curfew and blockade on the West Bank town of Dir Estiaa after two Molotov cocktails were thrown at Jewish colony-settlers and Israeli troops overnight, witnesses said.
The blockade on the West Bank and Gaza Strip is costing the Palestinian economy seven to 10 million dollars a day, the U.N.'s special coordinator for the Middle East said Wednesday.
Speaking to representatives of U.N. organizations working in the Palestinian territories, Terje Roed-Larsen said the current unemployment rate was 60 percent in the Gaza Strip and 40 percent in the West Bank, compared with levels of 11 percent before the start of an Israeli violent campaign against a Palestinian uprising on September 28.
It is estimated that one-third of Palestinians, or around one million people are living below the poverty level on less than two dollars a day.
But the Israel-U.S. meeting focused on the more immediate goal of maintaining the ceasefire long enough to allow the Mitchell recommendations to be applied. At the White House meeting, Bush told Sharon the two sides should move into implementing the Mitchell plan, while Sharon countered that Israel would not negotiate "under fire" and that the plan could only begin after 10 days of total quiet.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said his side would push hard to restart the peace process when it met with Powell.
"We have only one demand to submit to Powell, that is to establish a calendar defining the stages in the application of the (Mitchell) report," Erakat said.
"Sharon does not have the right to dictate to us his calendar nor his conditions. The United States, the European Union, the Arab world, the Palestinian Authority and Israel have said 'yes' to the report, and it is time to implement it," he said.
In that context, Israeli and Palestinian security officials began meetings near Ramallah in the West Bank under the auspices of the United States and in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian security source told AFP.
Powell will go on to Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah on Friday and stop off in Paris on the way home to visit Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who has been an often sharp critic of U.S. policies.
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