RIYADH/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 December — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, held talks here yesterday with US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns. The talks focused on Washington’s new initiative to establish peace in the Middle East.
Burns flew in overnight from Amman, where Jordan’s King Abdallah told him a US peace vision for the Middle East should include an independent Palestinian state. He also visited Cairo where he met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Saudi Arabia has welcomed the new US moves on the Middle East, but called on Washington to translate words into action and apply more pressure on Israel to accept a comprehensive and just peace deal.
Burns also met in Riyadh with Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal and discussed bilateral relations and issues of mutual concern.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, one of them an 11-year-old boy, after surrounding the West Bank city of Jenin. Israeli forces ringed Jenin and Nablus, also in the West Bank, in an overnight operation.
Three Israeli tanks commandeered a Palestinian-ruled hilltop overlooking Jenin. Several dozen tanks remained positioned around the city and its outlying villages from previous cordons, Palestinian security officials said. “We are on the outskirts of Jenin which includes an area under Palestinian control. Near Nablus we are outside the city but not in area A (under Palestinian control),” an Israeli security source said, without elaborating.
Late yesterday, three people were killed and dozens injured when Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up in the center of Jerusalem on one of the main streets running through the western half of the city, police said.
In the Gaza Strip, a brief gunfight erupted between Palestinian police and the Islamic Jihad group when police tried to arrest a member of the organization. A Palestinian security source said senior Islamic Jihad leader Muhammad Al-Hindi was arrested late yesterday.
