OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 27 June — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat threw down a challenge to US President George W. Bush yesterday calling elections for January that he is likely to win and expanding on his proposed reforms.
Bush for his part countered with a threat to withhold US aid from the Palestinians unless they made the sweeping political, economic and security changes he has demanded.
Bush, attending the G-8 meeting in Canadian Rockies resort of Kananaskis threatened to cut off money to the Palestinians as key US allies — Britain and Canada —expressed little enthusiasm for Bush’s call for replacing the Palestinian president with new leaders.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told a press conference yesterday in Jericho that presidential and legislative elections would be held between Jan. 10 and 20, and local elections in March. Erekat also promised a series of reforms, notably to the judiciary and security services, in the coming months.
Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath told AFP that Arafat had confirmed to him that he would run for re-election.
Erekat called on the G-8 summit of industrial powers meeting in Canada "to try to convince President Bush that what Palestinians and Israelis need is action not vision" to resolve the Middle East crisis. "Vision constitutes no policy," he said.
"The world and its leaders and President Bush should not take short cuts. That is, they should not put the blame on the Palestinian side," Erekat said.
"What is needed is an end to the Israeli occupation," he said, adding that Bush’s call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the settlements on Palestinian soil "required mechanisms for implementation."
In Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they would boycott the elections unless the Palestinian Authority renounced the Oslo accords.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, kept a tight grip on seven cities in the West Bank and troops enforcing a curfew in Jenin shot dead a seven-year-old boy.
Israeli tanks laid siege to Arafat’s local offices in Hebron.
As soldiers pounded the "moqataa" building housing offices of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in the southern West Bank, other troops opened fire inside the Jenin camp in the north medical sources said.
Israeli troops took over the Palestinian town of Halhoul, north of Hebron yesterday, arrested 44 Palestinians in Hebron and 22 in the nearby towns of Tubas and Dura, Palestinian sources said.
The army also bulldozed a police station in Tubas, the sources said, with no injuries reported.
A local Hamas leader, Ibrahim Abu Arra, and a Palestinian security guard were arrested in the nearby village of Aqaba.
Erekat unveiled a 100-day reform plan of sweeping changes in the financial, judicial and security sectors.
He denied the reforms unveiled were prompted by Bush’s call for "a new and different Palestinian leadership ... not compromised by terror" as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The seven-page document was approved by the Palestinian legislative council, or Parliament, and endorsed by Arafat.
The 100-day plan pledges to "immediately reinforce the separation of powers," between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the Palestinian Authority.
The action plan says all Palestinian governmental institutions will be restructured and modernized within two months to "create a modern and effective civil service".
The action plan calls for a series of major reforms of the PA security apparatus within two months.
The preventive security services, police and civil defense forces will be attached to the Palestinian Ministry of Interior by presidential decree within one week.
In the financial sector, the PA will "implement the principle of the indivisibility of the treasury in the management of public funds," committing itself to transfer all revenues from commercial and investment activities and foreign aid grants and loans to a single account within two months.
Commercial and investment operations run by the PA, which holds several monopolies, will be reorganized through the establishment of a Palestinian Investment Fund managed by an accountable board and submitted to regular and publicized audits.
Under the plan, the PA is to submit the 2003 budget to the legislative council on Nov. 1, in keeping with the law.
Also in the document, the government welcomes an Arab peace initiative endorsed at a Beirut summit in March offering normal ties with Israel in return from its pullout from occupied Arab lands, including east Jerusalem.
The government calls upon the international community to help end the military blockade of the Palestinian territories, which it says "hamper and can even abort implementation of the reform and development plan".
A senior US official said yesterday that before deciding on his call for Arafat’s removal, Bush received intelligence showing the Palestinian leader helped finance a group behind a series of bombings in Israel.
Ismail Haniyah, a senior figure in Hamas, said Bush’s new Middle East policy merely upheld the "Zionist occupation" and vowed continued resistance. (The Independent)
