OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 April — Israel defied the United Nations over a fact-finding mission to the ravaged Jenin refugee camp but agreed to a proposal by US President George W. Bush to end a month-long siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The Palestinians also accepted the proposal but Arafat pressed US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a phone call last night to include the lifting of Israel’s siege at Bethlehem’s church within the US plan, the official WAFA news agency reported.
According to a top Palestinian official Israeli troops will start pulling out of Ramallah overnight.
The Israeli decision to end the siege on Arafat was the first result of the five-hour talks between Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and President Bush in Texas last Thursday. Prince Abdullah yesterday thanked Bush for his efforts to end the standoff.
Speaking to the US president by phone, the crown prince said the Saudi government would continue to make contributions toward achieving a just and comprehensive Middle East peace settlement. During the telephone conversation, Bush recalled the “frank and sincere” talks the two had at his Texas ranch.
In a statement in Crawford yesterday President Bush said the deal to end Israel’s siege of Arafat’s compound marked “a hopeful day for the region,” and urged Arafat to “act decisively” to end “terrorism.”
“This has been a hopeful day for the region,” Bush told reporters at his ranch. “Chairman Arafat is now free to move around and free to lead and we expect him to do so,” Bush said.
“Mr Arafat must perform. Mr. Arafat must do his job (by halting Palestinian violence toward Israelis). He must earn my respect by leading,” Bush said.
Bush also said negotiators were “making good progress” toward ending an Israeli-Palestinian standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Meanwhile, under the Bush plan accepted by Tel Aviv, Israeli forces will leave Arafat’s compound and let him travel anywhere once six wanted men are moved to a Palestinian prison where they will be guarded by US and British jailers.
“As soon as it is executed, Arafat will be free to move,” Israeli government spokesman Amnon Perlman said of the proposal approved by the Israeli Cabinet.
About the Bush plan Arafat said: “It is a package and should be solving the issues of Ramallah and Bethlehem.”
The US and British security experts are, meanwhile, expected to arrive in the Palestinian territories today to start assessing the technical details of taking custody of Palestinian activists holed up in Arafat’s headquarters, the Palestinian leadership said in a statement.
“President Arafat accepts the US and British plan and expects the experts to come tomorrow to work out the technical details concerning the plan in a short time,” the statement said earlier yesterday.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) earlier called on the Palestinian Authority to reject the offer by Washington to supply guards for PFLP activists sought by Israel.
A White House statement said Bush, who is visiting his ranch in Texas, had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by telephone on Saturday to try to resolve the siege.
Bush invited Sharon to visit Washington which the Israeli premier accepted.
Sharon is expected to head to the United States and meet Bush in the coming week.
Israel, meanwhile, refused to cooperate with the UN mission and warned it would try to block any visit by the team. The Israeli Cabinet voted to refuse cooperation with the UN team.
Israeli officials say they fear the team’s mission could be used as an excuse to open legal proceedings against Israeli leaders for the army’s destruction of large parts of the Jenin camp in a nine-day offensive earlier this month. The UN team, which had assembled in Geneva, earlier yesterday canceled its scheduled flight departure, a Swiss airport source said.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told the United Nations yesterday it would be pointless to send a fact-finding team to Israel now to probe its assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
The sources said Peres delivered the message in a telephone call to Cornelio Sommaruga, a member of the UN team waiting in Geneva for the green light to fly to Israel as scheduled yesterday.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat yesterday denounced Israel for dragging its heels in giving a UN fact-finding team the green light to visit the war-blasted Jenin camp.
“The world must understand that all the Israeli acts are aimed at creating a delay in order to prevent the fact-finding mission from doing its job, which is to show the reality of what happened in the Jenin camp and other places,” Erekat told AFP. He said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan should order the team in “immediately.”
“There has been enough delay and the world should know that Israel is trying to hide its criminals in this way,” he said.
The Palestinians say hundreds of residents, mainly civilians, were massacred at the camp.
In Ramallah, a US delegation headed by the consul to the Palestinian territories, Ronald Schlicher, yesterday visited Arafat, Palestinian officials inside the building said. A British diplomatic delegation also visited the beleaguered Palestinian leader, the Palestinian officials added, without giving more details.
A lengthy round of negotiations yesterday failed to produce an agreement to end the 27-day-old Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity, the chief Palestinian negotiator said. “So far we reached no solution,” Salah Al-Taamari said.
“We agreed on some kinds of principles to clarify our disagreements.”
A military expert for the rights group Amnesty International said yesterday he had found no evidence of a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp but had seen signs of war crimes by the Israeli Army.
In Bethlehem, 22 peace activists who tried to deliver food yesterday to Palestinians trapped by the Israel Army inside Bethlehem’s church were stopped by soldiers, they said.
The foreign activists jumped barbed wire at Manger Square and reached the doors of the church, Georgina Reeves, a British pacifist who led the action, told AFP.
The demonstrators carried food and medical supplies but the Israeli soldiers seized the supplies and stopped them from entering the building, she said. The army pushed them back and hurled smoke bombs.
