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Israel PM-Elect Sharon Rejects Palestinian Peace Call Before Car Bomb Explodes
JERUSALEM, Feb 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In an ominous sign of the difficult way ahead in Middle East peacemaking, a top aide to Israeli prime-minister elect Ariel Sharon rebuffed Thursday Palestinian calls for talks to resume where they broke off with Ehud Barak's outgoing administration.
"There was no accord concluded in Taba and what was discussed does not commit the government that Mr. Sharon will form, as he said during the election campaign," Sharon's diplomatic advisor Zalman Shoval said.
The marathon talks in the Egyptian resort of Taba, the most intensive since deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence exploded in late September, ended without agreement on any of the key issues although the two sides said they were closer than ever to a deal.
"This government will only be held by signed accords," Shoval said, referring in particular to the 1993 Oslo accords and further interim accords since in Wye River in the United States and the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The prospect of a Sharon government, set to take office after the right-wing Likud leader's crushing win over Barak in Tuesday's election for prime minister, has already sent ripples of concern through the international community.
In response, Shoval is due to lead a delegation to Washington next week to outline his peace policies to the new administration of President George W. Bush.
Sharon's Likud transition team is also due to begin intensive talks Thursday with political allies and foes on the creation of a new government.
Likud has only 19 seats in parliament and Sharon wants to form a national unity government including members of the defeated Barak's Labor party to give him enough seats to pass the 2001 budget by a March 31st deadline and stave off early general elections.
The Palestinian leadership had called Wednesday for Sharon to pick up negotiations where they left off, saying the Taba round had only been interrupted because of the election and that both parties had agreed to resume once the new government was formed.
"If the new Israeli government believes that we accept to start negotiations from the zero-point then it is committing a big mistake," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said Thursday.
Shoval also described the bridging proposals put forward by former U.S. president Bill Clinton that formed the basis of the Taba talks as "dead".
The Clinton plan envisaged the transfer to a future Palestinian state of 95% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip, but allowing 80% of Jewish settlers to remain in the occupied territories.
It also proposed Palestinian sovereignty over the Arab districts of Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem, including the al-Aqsa mosque esplanade that is holy to both Muslims and Jews, but called for the Palestinians to renounce their demands for the right of return to Israel of some 3.7 million refugees.
But Sharon has ruled out any division of Jerusalem, which he has vowed to preserve under Israeli sovereignty, and any further land transfers to the Palestinians, who currently control fully or partially little more than 40% of the West Bank.
Bush said Wednesday he would promote "stability" in the Middle East to give Sharon the opportunity to push for peace, while Secretary of State Colin Powell made a round of telephone calls to Arab leaders.
"The message is ... that we're at a delicate time, that the prime minister-elect will need to form a government and that during this period we should avoid provocations, we should avoid counter-provocations," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Shoval also took a hard line on Syria, rejecting conditions put forward by Damascus for a resumption of negotiations that have been stalled for more than a year.
"The conditions put forward by Syria for a resumption of negotiations are unacceptable," Shoval said referring to a demand that Israel first agree to a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which it seized in the 1967 war.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Wednesday that his country was ready to restart talks if the Sharon government agreed to "carry through the conditions for peace" from Damascus.
"Everyone knows our conditions for peace. We are ready to engage in negotiations with those who can see them through," Assad said in an interview appearing Thursday in Asharq al-Awsat.
Negotiations resumed amid great fanfare in December 1999 but broke down the following January because of disputes over the extent of the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, which was annexed by the Jewish state in 1981.
In the territories themselves, almost 400 people have been killed in the wave of violence that erupted in late September.
Compounding the violence, a car bomb went off in a Jerusalem neighborhood late Thursday, just two days after Sharon's election injuring ten. One woman was lightly injured and another nine treated for shock.
Police said a motorcycle patrol arrested two men as they were fleeing the scene on foot towards east Jerusalem, but no further details of the suspects were available.
"The booby-trapped car contained a large amount of explosives and was completed destroyed in the blast," Jerusalem police chief Miki Levy said.
Police and ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast, which occurred near the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Meir Shearim.
A previously unknown Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it was designed to counter the "Zionist arrogance" of Israeli right-wing Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon.
In an anonymous telephone call to AFP, a man saying he represented the Popular Palestinian Resistance Forces, claimed responsibility for the car bomb.
"There will be a series of other attacks against the Zionist arrogance of Ariel Sharon," the caller said before hanging up.
The caller said a cell called the "martyrs of Sabra and Shatila" set off the bomb.
Sharon is reviled among Arabs for his role as defense minister in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, for which an Israeli panel found him indirectly responsible.
Sharon, for his part, demanded that the Palestinians bring a complete halt to "terror and violence" after the blast.
"I will try to advance the peace process, but that depends on an absolute halt to violence," the Likud party leader Sharon said.
"The peace negotiations are important, and the government will do everything to that end, but terrorism and violence must cease," he told Israeli television.
It left one person in a state of shock, police said, revising down sharply earlier estimates of the number of people injured.
"We are faced with a phenomenon of terrorism, and the Palestinian Authority must fulfill its task, according to the Oslo accords, to bring it to an end," Sharon said.
Barak, deserted by the electorate following the eruption of more than four months of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence that has cost almost 400 lives, said of the blast: "This proves that the Palestinians will try to dictate to the new government about the peace process."
The bombing was the first in Israel since January 1st, when 20 Israelis were injured in a car bomb explosion in the northern coastal city of Netanya.
In Jerusalem in November, two Israelis were killed when a powerful car bomb exploded near a busy market in the heart of the city, an attack claimed by the Islamic Jihad.
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