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Seven Days Without Bloodshed Needed For Mitchell Start
JERUSALEM, June 28 (News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday seven days of quiet are needed before going ahead with the Mitchell plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
"There will be a seven-day period starting at some point in the future when quiet occurs," Powell said at a joint press conference after the two met at Sharon's Jerusalem residence.
He said after that there would be an evaluation of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's commitment to the ceasefire before moving ahead with the internationally backed Mitchell plan aimed at getting the two sides back to peace talks.
"Following that successful seven day period, which I hope will come about in the very near future, we will move into the Mitchell committee sequence," he said.
"This is a package, it's a plan, it will work if we can get the violence ended," Powell said.
He said the timeline for carrying out the Mitchell plan was "consistent" with what he had discussed earlier Thursday with Arafat.
Sharon said: "Once absolute calm has returned, there will be a seven day test."
"If the calm is total, we will go on to the next phase, that of the confidence building measures, but which ones I will not detail," the Israeli prime minister said.
U.S. and Israeli officials said they had agreed on the timeline for implementing the Mitchell report, which calls for the six-week cooling-off period to be followed by confidence measures leading to a return to political negotiations.
Both men declined to specify when the seven-day period could be said to have occurred, with Powell underlining the final say would go to Sharon.
"It is the prime minister who bears ultimate responsibility as to what direction his country will move in with respect to the beginning of the Mitchell committee sequence," he said.
"It is the two parties that will have to decide together that we can move forward into the cooling off period," Powell said.
Despite a would-be Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire on June 13th, nine Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed.
The latest was an Israeli settler woman shot dead earlier Thursday in the West Bank by Palestinian gunmen.
"We condemn it, we deplore it. It is outrageous, it is a crime, and those responsible for it should be condemned, they should be brought to justice," Powell said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, asked on the sidelines of the press conference when the seven days had passed and the cooling-off period could begin, said: "The killing and bombing will stop. This will speak for itself."
He added: "If there will be incidents, the clock will stop."
Meanwhile, the White House said Thursday that comments made by Powell on the issue of outside observers to monitor any future Israeli-Palestinian steps toward peace reflected a long-standing U.S. position.
Powell's comments, made in Jerusalem earlier Thursday, were not "an endorsement" of the Palestinian position on observers, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters here.
They were instead "a restatement of long-standing United States policy," the spokesman said.
Powell's reference to "some kind of monitoring-observer function" referred back to language agreed on at the Wye Accord of 1998, the spokesman said.
"Both parties would have to agree to what that monitoring function would be, and that's what [Powell] indicated," Fleischer added.
Under the Wye Accord, signed by the Israelis and Palestinians in Washington in October 1998, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was to be given a central input in monitoring border checkpoints, as the planned phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of the West Bank took effect.
The accord also empowered CIA operatives to referee disputes concerning the detention of suspected "terrorists" by the Israeli or Palestinian authorities.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, on the other hand, has long called for international observers to be deployed in the Palestinian territories. Israel strongly opposes such a mission.
The United States in the past had demurred on the issue of international observers, refusing to take a public stance until the Jewish state agreed to at least consider it.
In a news conference Thursday, Powell said he believed an outside observation team would be an appropriate way to ensure Israeli and Palestinian compliance on any agreement they might reach on the confidence-building steps to bring the parties back to peace talks.
"I think if we get into the confidence-building measures, there will be a need for monitors and observers to see what's happening on the ground, to serve as interlocutors and to go to points of friction and make independent observations," Powell said.
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