RAMALLAH, West Bank, 13 June — A senior Palestinian official said yesterday that the Palestinians have accepted all but one element of a cease-fire plan proposed by CIA Director George Tenet.
“We declare we have accepted the paper, but objected to the buffer zone,” the official said, referring to a provision in the spymaster’s proposal that would establish areas of separation between Israeli and Palestinian forces.
The official spoke after Tenet met Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “We have agreed with Tenet that he will announce that the Palestinians have accepted the American document and an agreement with him, the official said.
US officials had said Tenet planned to leave for home yesterday. But State Department spokesman Philip Reeker later said Tenet would “determine his next steps” only after the meeting with Arafat in Ramallah. Palestinians had said earlier they had problems with Tenet’s ideas for cementing a cease-fire that Arafat offered on June 2, the day after a Palestinian suicide bomb killed 21 people in Tel Aviv, raising the specter of Israeli retaliation.
Palestinian security chief Muhammad Dahlan said after the Tenet-Arafat meeting began that the discussions were “positive”. But Dahlan said the Palestinians rejected a provision in Tenet’s plan for buffer zones between Israeli and Palestinian forces, or any departure from a peace blueprint proposed by a committee led by former US Sen. George Mitchell.
A report published by the Mitchell committee calls for an end to violence followed by a cooling-off period and confidence-building moves, including a freeze on Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza.
Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday discussed by telephone the latest developments in the Middle East. Prince Abdullah also spoke with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and discussed current developments in the Middle East. The Saudi crown prince arrived in Casablanca on Monday at the conclusion of a four-nation tour that had also taken him to Syria, Germany and Sweden. The Palestinian issue figured high on his agenda during the tour.
In Cairo, Annan said he would work toward reviving stalled peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians as a means of consolidating the recent cease-fire. “For the cease-fire to hold, in the longer term, we need to embed it in the peace process. And I hope during my visit here I will be able to encourage the parties to move in that direction,” Annan told reporters at Cairo airport at the start of a regional tour.
Meanwhile, the White House announced yesterday that US President George W. Bush has put off for six more months any decision on transferring the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a memorandum sent to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush said his administration “remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem.” But he cited national security interests for the further six-month delay, from June 15. The text of the memorandum was released in Madrid, where Bush arrived yesterday at the start of a European tour.
In another development, an Israeli Army spokesman confirmed yesterday that troops stationed in the Gaza Strip are using shells which split into hundreds of tiny metal arrows. Responding to a report in the Israeli Haaretz daily, the Israeli Army insisted that use of the Flachette shells was legal, but Palestinian national security service commander Saeb Jaz said international conventions forbade their use.
