JERUSALEM, 26 April 2004 — Israeli leaders yesterday said there were no immediate plans to kill Yasser Arafat.
“The prime minister doesn’t intend to carry out anything next week or today or tomorrow,” Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, a Sharon confidant, told Army Radio.
Cabinet Minister Gideon Ezra said Sharon had no plans to expel or assassinate Arafat. They said the Israeli leader had merely repeated a long-standing Israeli position.
The statements by the Israeli leaders came after a global outcry over Sharon’s declaration in a television interview over the weekend that he is no longer bound by a promise to the United States not to harm Arafat.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, who arrived in Cairo for talks with President Hosni Mubarak, called Sharon’s threats “dangerous and frightening.”
“Like every Palestinian, Yasser Arafat knows that his life is in no way assured, but an adversary has no right to threaten the life of an elected president as Sharon has done,” Qorei said.
Qorei also said the Palestinian Authority “rejects any change in the approach to current questions” between Israel and the Palestinians, “including the problem of refugees, Jerusalem, borders and the use of water.”
Such problems had to be settled through negotiations between the two sides, he added.
