"I will not travel anywhere before Israel lifts a siege on President Arafat," Abbas

Additional Reporting By Mustafa el-Sawwaf, IOL Palestine Correspondent

OCCUPIED JERUSLAM, April 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) -  The new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday, April 27, that he would not travel abroad to meet foreign leaders unless Israel lifts restrictions on the movements of Yasser Arafat.

"I will not travel anywhere before Israel lifts a siege on President Arafat so that we can get a guarantee he will be able to go abroad and come back freely without Israeli objection," he told reporters, according to the BBC News Online.

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was speaking after reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had decided not to prevent foreign dignitaries from visiting  Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters. He had earlier said the Palestinian leader is free to leave his Ramallah base and go abroad but he will not promise to let him return.

U.S. President George W. Bush has welcomed the appointment of Abu Mazen, saying that he would invite the new Palestinian minister but not Arafat to the White House.

"I looked at the history of Arafat... And I believe Abu Mazen is a man dedicated to peace and I look forward to working with him for the two-state solution," he added.

Pawn

Analysts say that acceptance of an invitation to the White House would make Abu Mazen look like a pawn in Palestinian eyes unless Israel stops trying to isolate Arafat.

Abu Mazen called for a suspension of attacks against Israeli targets, and insisted on holding on to the security chief post capable of taking on resistance groups.

But many groups resisting the long-standing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories have warned him not to take down their fighters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The appointment of Abbas was welcomed by international mediators as a key step forward in the Middle East peace process and the publication of the "roadmap" for defusing tension between the Palestinians and Israel.

But fears that the roadmap, mainly drafted by the U.S., would be biased towards the Israeli government that had earlier called for 100 changes to it are still running high among the Palestinians. 

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said the roadmap is just a joint U.S.-Israeli bid to "end the Intifada against occupation and settle temporary solutions for the crisis."   

"The Palestinian parliament should reject the reformist cabinet as it is "imposed by U.S. blackmail, pressure and intervention in our internal affairs," the PFLP said in a statement obtained by IslamOnline.net.

The Palestinian parliament is expected to meet in the coming days to approve the new cabinet agreed by Arafat and Abbas, clearing the way for publication of the international peace plan known as the "roadmap".

Under the international peace "roadmap," Palestinians must cease all attacks and Israel must freeze settlement activity and dismantle recently-built illegal outposts.

The  Israeli army only plans to dismantle two unauthorised Jewish settlement outposts near Hebron in the southern West Bank when Abbas presents his cabinet this week, the Israeli public radio said.

Facing the fury of Arabs at a quick movement on the Iraqi situation and a deliberate ignorance of the Palestinian one, Bush said few days before unleashing war against Iraq that the "roadmap" would be published unchanged when the new cabinet is in office despite Israeli concerns about some aspects.

But Washington Post said on Saturday that there is a recently completed draft document assigning tasks to parties involved in the peace process that suggested a number of Israeli concerns would be addressed.

The plan said that United States would take a central role in monitoring the implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace, with European, United Nations and Russian diplomats playing a secondary role.

Diplomatic Shuttle

In another related development, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is to visit the region on Thursday, May 1, while Japan's Kawagushi was to visit Israel on Sunday, with a trip to Ramallah on Tuesday, officials said.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said she would meet Arafat despite Israel's disapproval of such visits, but the embassy declined to specify her itinerary.

"The purpose of her meeting with President Arafat is...to have a frank exchange of views about the peace process," Kawagushi's press secretary said.

Earlier Palestinian foreign minister-designate Nabil Shaath said that she will meet Arafat, despite a call by Israel for foreign dignitaries to avoid him.

The Japanese minister wound down a one-day visit to Jordan Sunday and headed to Israel and the Palestinian territories ahead of a visit to Syria on Wednesday for talks on post-war Iraqi reconstruction and the Arab-Israeli peace process.