RAMALLAH, West Bank, December 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday, December 23, slammed U.S. delays on an international peace “roadmap” to tackle the conflict with Israel in a pre-Christmas speech.

“The delay in the implementation of the roadmap will support the occupation and encourage the Israeli government to continue its policy of occupation and destroying all Palestinian facilities,” Arafat told a crowd of around 500 Christians and Muslims in the reoccupied West Bank city of Ramallah, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Speaking by an olive tree set up to mark the holiday, he said the roadmap drafted by U.S., U.N., E.U. and Russian diplomats of the so-called Middle East “quartet” should be enacted as quickly as possible and observers sent to oversee it is implemented. “This will show that the quartet is serious,” he said.

Washington last week blocked the adoption of a finalized version of the much-discussed plan - which foresees the creation of a Palestinian state within three years - until after Israeli elections on January 28, despite E.U. calls for swift action.

Arafat’s administration on Sunday postponed its own elections, also slated for January, until Israel ends its six-month reoccupation of almost the whole West Bank which began in June.

Israel has barred Arafat, blocked in Ramallah almost non-stop for the past year, from attending Christmas mass in Bethlehem Tuesday night, the second year in a row he has been prevented from his traditional visit.

Although Arafat is a Muslim, but has attended the festivities with his Christian constituents since his Palestinian Authority took charge of Bethlehem in 1995.

Arafat told the crowd, which included Christian leaders, that his Christmas message was a call for “love, peace and forgiveness.”

“We want to reconfirm that we condemn all violence, killing and destruction,” he said.

“We are committed to the real peace that I signed up to with Yitzhak Rabin,” the Israeli Premier with whom he signed the 1993 Oslo peace accords establishing limited Palestinian self-rule, and who was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist in 1995.

Arafat said Rabin had been killed by “the terrorists who lead Israel now.”

Saudi Urges International Pressure on Israel

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia called on the international community Monday to intervene at once to halt Israel’s “aggression” against the Palestinians and establish peace in the Middle East, the official SPA news agency reported.

“The ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people and their land can only further complicate the situation, and the international community is required to assume its responsibilities and bring an end to this aggression,” Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz told a weekly cabinet meeting.

“The international community must intervene at once and without delay to ensure the implementation of U.N. resolutions ... and establish peace ... such that all peoples in the region will live in peace and security,” he said.

Abdullah, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, was the driving force behind a plan offering Israel peace with the Arab world in return for its withdrawal from all Arab lands occupied in 1967.

The initiative was adopted at an Arab summit in Beirut last March.

Political Talks, Not Just Reforms

And in a separate related development, a top Palestinian minister said Monday that the Palestinians want a conference hosted by Britain next month to have a wider political scope and not focus solely on progress in reforming the Palestinian Authority.

“We want a broader conference that focuses on the political aspect and not only on the question of reforms,” International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath said in Cairo.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in mid-December he was inviting Palestinian leaders - as well as EU, Russian, U.S. and UN representatives - to London in January to discuss reform efforts.

Other Arab countries, but not Israel, are also expected to be invited.

Shaath, who was speaking following talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, said the Palestinians were “working to modify the agenda of this meeting in order to make it political.”

The Minister also expressed hope that upcoming meetings in Cairo between Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction and the Islamist resistance group Hamas would “result in an inter-Palestinian accord embodying national unity.”