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Leading Palestinian Official Begins Washington Visit
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian Authority officials started another diplomatic initiative in order to persuade world leaders to work to find ways to end a crisis that has plagued the Middle East talks for the past year, news agencies reported.
The most highly prolific diplomatic gesture came from Washington as the U.S. agreed to receive Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) number two Mahmud Abbas after months of ignoring Palestinian officials and receiving a parade of Israeli diplomats, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Abbas arrived in Washington Sunday on a mission to persuade U.S President George W. Bush's administration to intervene in the Middle East conflict.
Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is the highest-ranking Palestinian to be invited to Washington since Bush took office in January 20th.
The Palestinian official will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the PLO representative to the United States, Hassan Abdel Rahman, told the official Voice of Palestine radio.
"The goal of these meetings is to look at ways to get out of the crisis," and to voice the Palestinian side of the deadly conflict with Israel, Abdel Rahman said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian minister Saeb Erakat told AFP he would leave later Sunday for New York for talks with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on the situation in the region after more than seven months of Israeli violence.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visited the White House in January for talks with outgoing president Bill Clinton, but to the dismay of Palestinian officials, has not been invited to meet with Bush.
Arafat, however, will visit Paris on May 23rd for talks with French President Jacques Chirac, Palestinian international cooperation minister Nabil Shaath said over the same issue.
Shaath told a press conference in the West Bank town of Ramallah that Arafat would also meet with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and said that he himself would be visiting several European countries next week as part of Palestinian diplomatic efforts to explain the situation on the ground.
"We are the subject of a dirty war by Israel," Shaath told a press conference in Ramallah.
Abdel Rahman said the Palestinians would speak with U.S. officials about a joint Egyptian-Jordanian peace plan, supported by the Palestinians, to end the fighting and resume talks on a final status of the occupied territories.
Also to be discussed, Abdel Rahman said, is the report by an international panel that was chaired by former U.S. senator and Northern Ireland mediator George Mitchell, that called for Israel to halt all settlement building in the occupied territories and refrain from using rubber-coated metal bullets against unarmed demonstrators.
The Palestinian cabinet has called the Mitchell report "very positive," while Sharon rejected its call for a freeze on Jewish settlements.
Powell on Thursday called it a "fine report" that could "give the parties a launch-pad to start a new initiative," although U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday there may be portions of the report with which Washington does not agree.
Powell has repeatedly said his country is working with Egypt and Jordan to resume the Palestinian- Israeli talks, reiterating that Washington is committed to bringing the conflict in the Middle East to a stop.
Shaath rued the decision during the Oslo peace process to leave the issue of Jewish settlements unresolved until final status negotiations.
"While we talked of peace, Israel strengthened its occupation [in the West Bank and Gaza Strip] through settlement building and I realize now that we had committed a grave mistake in accepting this," he said.
The Oslo peace process, which began in 1993, established Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but left the most volatile issues for final status negotiations, which were supposed to be completed by 1998.
Final status matters included the question of Jewish settlements, the establishment of a Palestinian state, sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees' right of return.
Settlements have grown by an estimated 50% since the start of the Oslo peace process.
Egypt and Jordan submitted their own views on possible solutions to the crisis in an initiative that was welcomed by the Palestinian Authority and the American administration, but was not accepted by the Israeli side, which expressed its own reservations to the initiative. The countries are the only ones among Arab states that had signed peace treaty with Israel.
The ongoing wave of violence was triggered by Sharon's transgression on the Muslim Holy Mosque of al-Aqsa on September 28th last year.
Ever since he was elected prime minister, Sharon, who is accused by the Arab and Muslim world as the cause of the current wave of violence, has followed a radical policy line towards the Palestinians. He authorized several military incursions into territories under Palestinian control and has also approved military operations against refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.
Due Israel's aggressive policies, more than 540 Palestinians, mostly teenagers and children, have been killed by what international human rights organizations call an "excessive use of force," by Israeli occupation forces.
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