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Sharon Opens Washington Talks
WASHINGTON, March 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As violence continued Monday in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with senior U.S. officials on Monday in talks dominated by the threat of "terrorism" and regional security.
The day was peppered with denunciations against Palestinian violence and "terrorism" concerns.
Sharon's first day of a four-day U.S. visit included separate talks with George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
However, the start of the prime minister's first visit to Washington since his election was clouded by further violence in the region, including the killing by Palestinians of a Jewish settler in a drive-by-shooting near Bethlehem. That came a day after the Israeli army accused the Palestinians of firing a mortar from Gaza into Israel for the first time since 1967, and two days after the discovery of a dead 10-year-old Palestinian boy in bushes surrounding an Israeli settlement near Bethlehem in the Occupied Territories.
According to a spokesman for Sharon, the United States responded by urging Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian "terrorist" activities.
"The United States strongly demanded Yasser Arafat to stop terrorist activities," the spokesman said following a meeting between Sharon and Rice.
Sharon's office, as expected, earlier issued a statement condemning Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for allegedly deepening its involvement in terror and he repeated to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld his insistence that Israel would not negotiate peace while the violence continued.
Concentrating on the Palestinian violence theme, according to Sharon's spokesman, Israel and the United States had agreed to set up what he termed "a joint framework to combat terrorism."
Ahead of Tuesday's meeting with Bush, the White House said it had urged Sharon to ease economic pressure on the Palestinians and, once again, demanded that Arafat do more to halt violence.
Israel has blockaded the Palestinian territories and imposed economic sanctions in an effort to stop what it calls mounting anti-Israeli violence.
Concentrating on condemning Palestinians, no mention was made of superior, larger scale Israeli violence directed towards Palestinians.
"The president is very much looking forward to his meeting with Prime Minister Sharon, and he believes that in order to secure peace in the Middle East all parties concerned must do everything in their powers to make the violence stop," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
"The president wants to work with Prime Minister Sharon to re-establish trust, security, cooperation. The president would like to see an easing of economic pressure. The president would also like to make certain that the Palestinians take steps to end the violence."
In talks at the Pentagon, Sharon and Rumsfeld both expressed their preoccupation with the rise of "terrorism" targeting both Israel and the United States, said Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin.
He said that Sharon described "terrorism" as a "strategic problem threatening stability in the Middle East.
"Our two countries share many values, and are democracies exposed to the same dangers," Gissin quoted the prime minister as saying.
Sharon announced Sunday he had ordered new security contacts with the Palestinians in a bid to reduce violence.
The hawkish prime minister, responsible for the worst violence ever to occur in Lebanon against Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, has also said a resumption of security meetings were a precondition to renewed peace talks with the Palestinians. He has said he will put the emphasis on reducing violence, not a political settlement.
CIA chief Tenet visited the Middle East in January for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials in a line with stepped up security cooperation that followed the Wye accords between the Israelis and Palestinians signed in 1998.
Sharon, who was foreign minister at the time and signed the accords, said that Israel and the United States had the same objective in seeking to counter "Islamic terrorism", associated with Hezbollah and Hamas, both Palestinian occupation resistance groups.
Lebanon's Hezbollah movement led the armed campaign to end Israeli's occupation of southern Lebanon and has waged sporadic attacks since Israeli troops withdrew in May.
Sharon also said that he was ready to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians, but not while violence continued.
Sharon's visit to Washington comes after the new U.S. administration has shown it wants to play a less active role in the Middle East peace process.
Ahead of his meeting with Sharon, Powell, addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, reflected the new U.S. position when he said Washington "stands ready to assist, not insist," on peace in the region.
"The United States will stay involved," he said. "We have no intention of ignoring our responsibilities or the role we have played in the past."
But neither side should look to the United States to produce dramatic results capable of forging a breakthrough on peace, he said.
"I have no magic formula, I cannot snap my fingers, make the current situation go away or turn it around," Powell said.
Sharon, later Monday, also spoke at AIPAC.
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