PARIS/WASHINGTON, 30 June — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, held talks in Paris yesterday with US Secretary of State Colin Powell on major regional and international issues including the Middle East peace and the situation in Iraq, diplomatic sources said.
Powell said yesterday that the United States would need to think of new approaches in the Middle East if the Israelis and Palestinians cannot achieve seven straight days of calm. In a pessimistic assessment of the state of play after his three-day trip to the Middle East, Powell also said that he did not even try to persuade the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to accept that a certain level of violence may be inevitable.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, who briefed reporters after the 90-minute meeting at a luxury hotel, quoted Crown Prince Abdullah as having told Powell: “The perception now exists that the Israelis have turned their backs on peace.”
Prince Abdullah expressed satisfaction that the US was “taking the issue seriously”, the minister said. “One cannot really equate the responsibility of the Israelis and the responsibility of the Palestinians,” he went on to say. “The Palestinians are asked to provide 100 percent security for Israel and yet Israel is destroying the ability of the Palestinian Authority to do what is necessary. “The violence is perpetuating hopelessness and causing the acts of violence and retaliation,” he added.
Powell said as left the hotel to fly home: “We had an excellent conversation as usual.” “The talks between Prince Abdullah and Powell were in line with the continuing consultations with the Saudi leadership. We hear their views and expectations and benefit from their wisdom,” a spokesman of the American administration told Arab News.
“We understand and appreciate the concern of Saudi Arabia on the situation in the region, especially in the West Bank and Gaza and the confrontation between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We are also concerned with this situation.”
Powell arrived in Paris especially to meet with Crown Prince Abdullah. He arrived from Jordan after meeting Jordan’s King Abdallah, who said Israel must take “immediate and tangible” steps to lift a blockade of Palestinian areas and freeze settlement building. Speaking just before the meeting with Powell Prince Saud told Reuters that he thought Sharon was trying “to push the region to a precipice.” “He (Sharon) is following a policy that wants to cow the Palestinians into accepting unacceptable conditions,” Prince Saud said.
“He is asking unachievable things of the Palestinians and finding pretexts in this non-achievement to prevent the peace process from coming to fruition. The necessity is to return to negotiations,” the minister said, stressing that it was now up to Sharon to take the initiative. Powell met Sharon in Jerusalem and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes bombed a hill in southern Lebanon yesterday following attacks by Lebanon’s resistance group Hezbollah on nearby Israeli positions that wounded one soldier, an AFP correspondent witnessed in the Shebaa Farms area. At 1645 GMT, one hour after the Hezbollah attacks, two fighter bombers rocketed a hill between the towns of Shebaa and Kfar Shouba, near the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms that were the target of the attacks.
