LONDON, 11 January 2003 — Talks with Palestinian Authority delegates, banned by the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from attending a London conference, will go ahead Tuesday, London said yesterday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman said preparations for the conference, scheduled for Tuesday, were continuing but that no plans had been finalized.
Downing Street has insisted that some form of “dialogue” with the Palestinians will take place then, despite the fact Sharon turned down Thursday a written plea from Blair to overturn the ban. Israel and Britain have been at loggerheads since Monday when the Israeli government put a travel ban on the Palestinians in response to a double bombing which killed 22 people plus the two bombers the day before in Tel Aviv.
Details for the conference were still being finalized, Blair’s spokesman said refusing to confirm speculation that it would be canceled in the wake of the ban. “Part of the delay in announcing the format was because the Foreign Secretary (Jack Straw) was currently traveling around the Far East and the time difference had slowed things down,” the spokesman said at a press briefing.
Blair had hoped talks bringing together Palestinian leaders with the “quartet” of UN, European Union, Russian and US negotiators, could be help revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which have been stymied by two years of violence. A diplomatic source said Terje Roed-Larsen, the special UN coordinator in the Middle East, would be present. Other nations and blocs are likely to be represented at ambassadorial level.
Meanwhile, Sharon’s scandal-plagued election campaign faced mounting problems yesterday after a news conference in which he denied wrongdoing and assailed his main rival was yanked off the air. Israeli media slammed Sharon over Thursday’s televised appearance, abruptly cut off in an unprecedented move by a judge overseeing electoral procedure who said the prime minister’s political comments ran foul of broadcast regulations.
But it was not clear whether the controversy over a $1.5 million loan from a South Africa-based businessman to one of Sharon’s sons would in the long run reduce or rally support for the right-wing leader in the Jan. 28 election. The scandal has in the past week sharply cut the formidable lead his right-wing Likud party has been enjoying in opinion polls over the main opposition center-left Labour Party, led by Amram Mitzna.
Before the news conference was cut off, Sharon charged that Labour and its supporters had, for political motives, spread “vicious gossip” about him, his family and the Likud. Sharon denied any wrongdoing in connection with the $1.5 million loan that his son, Gilad, received from Cape Town businessman Cyril Kern.
Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, the Israeli Army continued its daily sweep for suspected militants, arresting three in the West Bank and demolishing the home of a suicide bomber. In the latest violence, Israeli troops killed a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in the West Bank refugee camp of Aida yesterday and wounded two others.
The army also shut down three West Bank liaison offices where Palestinian security officers once consulted with Israeli counterparts. It called their continued operation pointless.
The District Coordinating Office in the West Bank city of Jericho was the only one still functioning under interim peace deals shattered by the violence.
The military on Thursday ordered Palestinian police to leave the offices in Tulkarm, Qalqiliya and Nablus and confiscated their arms, Palestinian security sources said. An army spokesman confirmed the closures saying “the presence of armed Palestinian policemen had become a liability for Israel.”
The offices “had become irrelevant anyway,” he said, stressing that coordinating humanitarian aid “will continue however to allow Palestinian civilians not involved in terrorist attacks to continue to lead a normal life.”
International organizations such as the World Bank and USAID report, however, that 60 percent of the Palestinian population lives in poverty and that child malnutrition as result of Israeli blockades is widespread. Joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols had operated from liaison offices to deal with any security problems. (Agencies)
