OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 3 March — A Palestinian man yesterday detonated explosives strapped to his body, killing nine Israelis here even as Arab leaders prepared to discuss a Saudi peace initiative.
The attack, which was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was in apparent retaliation for the Israeli raid on two refugee camps in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack but said responsibility lay with what it called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “policy of aggression against the Palestinian people”.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa will travel next week to the Kingdom and Libya to discuss ideas of Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, for Middle East peace.
Moussa will visit the Kingdom tomorrow for talks with the crown prince. On Wednesday he will travel to Libya to meet with Muammar Qaddafi.
Crown Prince Abdullah suggested the possibility of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Arab land captured in the 1967 Middle East War.
Moussa will also meet with Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal to discuss ways of guaranteeing Arab support for the Saudi initiative that Crown Prince Abdullah was to present to an Arab summit in Beirut on March 27-28.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara discussed the Middle East crisis in a telephone call with Prince Saud, a Syrian newspaper reported yesterday. The two men consulted Friday over “developments under way in the Arab world and the Palestinian situation, in particular,” Tishrin said, without giving details.
Separately, Shara telephoned Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmud Hammud Friday to discuss “subjects pertaining to the Arab summit,” Tishrin said.
Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations have been frozen since January 2000, amid Syrian insistence that Israel recognize the right of Damascus to recover the Golan Height and Israel rejecting this.
Syrian President Bashar Assad will make a historic visit to Lebanon today for talks with President Emile Lahoud on this month’s Arab summit. Bashar’s visit will be his first to Lebanon since he succeeded his late father, Hafez Assad, in June 2000 and the third ever by a Syrian president.
Qaddafi yesterday threatened to withdraw from the Arab League over its apparent failure to handle the situation in Palestine. He described the League’s actions as “child’s play.” Addressing the General People’s Congress, he spelled out three conditions for peace with Israel: The return of all Palestinian refugees, the removal of weapons of mass destruction from the entire region, particularly Israel, and holding free elections under the aegis of the United Nations.
