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For The Second Time, Sharon Told Powell ‘No Pull Out”
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| Sharon
still rebuffs Powell’s withdrawal demands.
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TEL AVIV, April 14 (IslamOnline & News agencies) – Continuing his defiance of the whole world, not just his closest and may be only alley; the U.S., hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not give any timetable for pulling back his troops from the Palestinian lands during new talks Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell met with Sharon for about an hour at a hotel in Tel Aviv after conferring earlier Sunday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in his besieged West Bank headquarters in the town of Ramallah, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"He [Sharon] repeated that once the operation was done, troops would withdraw," an Israeli official, asked not to be named, told AFP. He added that the Israeli leader did not give a timetable.
Powell had wound up a new round of talks with Sharon without any word on progress in efforts to reach a ceasefire to end the Israeli army’s offensive in the Palestinian occupied territories.
After an hour long meeting, Sharon and Powell made no statements to the press, a clear sign of Sharon’s refusal to heed U.S. repeated demands of withdrawal “without delay”.
In his meeting earlier with Arafat, the chief U.S. diplomat pressed Arafat to put an end to martyr operations (Palestinian resistance only weapon). Powell was told by the Palestinians that a ceasefire depended on the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian towns in the West Bank.
Arafat stressed "the necessity for an immediate Israeli withdrawal" from the West Bank, Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
Calling Arafat-Powell discussions "long and serious", Abu Rudeina said Arafat "informed Powell of the situation on the ground and insisted on the necessity for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from all the Palestinian towns, villages, camps and other areas."
Arafat expressed serious concerns about the suffering of the Palestinian people, especially in Jenin, the site of fierce fighting, he added.
The two men agreed that talks would continue within the next 24 hours, Abu Rudeina said, giving no details, AFP reported.
"There was a clear and open exchange of opinions between the two sides, but we want more efforts and pressure from the Americans to get us out of this crisis and end the war and aggression declared by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people and leadership," he said.
The meeting with Sharon was the second in Powell's peace mission. A first round of talks Friday failed to produce an Israeli timetable for pulling back their forces from the West Bank towns seized since March 29.
Meanwhile, Powell is to make unscheduled visits to Lebanon and Syria amid fears that Israel's northern border is to become a new front in the Middle East conflict, an official Lebanese source said Sunday.
Powell will hold talks Monday with Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the official said. Powell will then fly on to Syria.
Hariri delayed a trip to the United States, where he is scheduled to see President George W. Bush Wednesday, to meet Powell, the official added.
Powell, whose tour began a week ago and took him to Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, will visit Syria and Lebanon against Hezbollah’s almost daily attacks on Israeli positions in occupied Sheba Farms.
Powell visited northern Israel Friday and was 30 kilometers away when the Lebanese resistance fighters fired mortar shells on Israeli positions in Sheba Farms area.
Ignoring the real cause of conflict and bloodshed in the Middle East, namely Israeli occupation of Arab lands, Powell condemned the attack and called "upon nations that have influence over Hezbollah, especially Syria, to do everything in their power to restrain Hezbollah and put a stop to this kind of activity before it widens the conflict in the region with consequences that are devastating to the whole region."
Despite international calls for restraint, the fundamentalist group stepped up its attacks on Israeli positions following the Israeli army's reoccupation of most West Bank cities 17 days ago.
Even Iran, which is also one of Hezbollah's main supporters, tried to defuse the tension with Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi urging restraint to Hezbollah during a visit to Lebanon Friday.
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