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Sharon Cancels Straw Meeting, EU Steps Up Efforts
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Straw,
left, confers with Fischer in Turkey before heading for their peace
mission in the Middle East.
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JERUSALEM, Feb. 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Sticking to his hardline policies, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon canceled a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who flew into Israel Wednesday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials, news agencies reported.
Straw went straight into talks with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer before heading off to Jerusalem to meet Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a British official said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
No meeting will take place with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is suffering from a bad case of influenza, a British official said.
On his last regional tour September 2001, just after the attacks on New York and Washington, Straw ran into trouble when he said in Tehran that "one of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine."
Sharon initially refused to see Straw, but he later allegedly relented after a phone call from British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Straw’s visit is the first step in a two-pronged EU initiative following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Spain last weekend.
After meeting Peres, Straw will head for talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Arafat has been confined by Israeli forces since early December.
The British Foreign Minister is scheduled to meet Thursday, February 14, with other senior officials from both sides.
In their meeting in Ramallah, Straw will apply more pressure on the Palestinian President to arrest and jail resistance activists, and dismantle Islamic Palestinian organizations, notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad, according to the British daily newspaper, The Independent.
British Foreign Office sources said he would be taking an equally "tough message" in a meeting, scheduled for today, with Sharon on the need to show restraint after a new spurt of violence.
Analysts in the Middle East region see Sharon’s refusal to see Straw as a clear sign of “his intentions toward the recent EU stepped up diplomacy to force Israel back to the negotiating table”.
Straw was supposed to push Sharon to end a military blockade of Arafat's headquarters. A Foreign Office source has said earlier: "It is not practical to place restrictions on Yasser Arafat and limit the ability of the Palestinian police to operate, yet expect them to be successful in efforts against terrorists."
Both Israeli and British diplomats are disappointed that Sharon, thought to be suffering from flu, has cancelled all his engagements, BBC’s online news service reported.
On Tuesday, Peres made proposals to try to halt further outbreaks of violence in the West Bank and Gaza - including a ceasefire and mutual recognition between Israel and a Palestinian state.
But they were reportedly dismissed by Sharon and Ben-Eliezer.
Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa in Cairo Wednesday.
Fischer, who has played an active role in attempting to tackle the 16-month security crisis, will proceed Thursday to Tel Aviv, swapping notes at the airport with Straw and meeting Sharon, Peres and Ben Eliezer.
Fischer is scheduled to hold talks with Arafat on Saturday.
The European Union pledged to work for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the meeting in Spain.
No master plan came out of the discussions, where French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine shopped his ambitious idea of Palestinian elections that would give new legitimacy to Arafat's leadership.
A British spokesman was quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday as saying Straw was "skeptical" about the election idea -- one that other ministers regard as premature.
But there was a consensus that a political dimension urgently needs to be put back into the picture, counterbalancing Israel's paramount concern for security, one that is echoed in Washington.
Israel objects to any negotiations with the Palestinians until there is a total halt in violence - a stance that EU foreign policy high representative Javier Solana has criticized as a "stupidity."
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