MOSCOW/GAZA, 4 November 2003 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said for the first time yesterday that he was ready to meet his Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei, while agreeing to make “concessions” in the Middle East peace process.
Sharon met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, on a three-day visit that Israeli officials said was aimed in part at forcing Moscow to admit that the so-called “road map” for peace that Russia has been pushing was in doubt and that new solutions were needed to the conflict.
“I have mentioned this in previous conversation with President Putin, that Israel is ready to make concessions in exchange for real peace,” Sharon said in opening remarks during his meeting with the Russian leader, the first in more than one year.
“Israel may be the only state in the world that is ready to make concessions without ever losing a single war,” he said. But Sharon added: “These concessions will not affect Israeli security.” While Sharon’s own public statements aimed at reconciliation seemed vague, a senior official traveling with the Israeli prime minister in Moscow told AFP that the Israeli prime minister may meet Qorei “within days”.
“The prime minister thinks a meeting is possible within the next few days with Ahmed Qorei,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “Contacts have been established ahead of such a meeting, but we have to wait and see if Abu Alaa (Qorei) succeeds in forming his new government and how things evolve,” the official said.
Adding to the sense that some progress was being made between the two sides, a Palestinian source told AFP that Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad had met with Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz late last week, without giving details.
Meanwhile, the hard-line Hamas movement raised the possibility of a halt of attacks against Israeli civilians, although Israeli officials in Moscow and Sharon himself have so far not commented on the proposal.
“It is possible that Hamas will propose during a meeting with Abu Alaa (Qorei) continuing the resistance but sparing civilians from both sides from the horrors of war,” Hamas’ political leader Abdul Aziz Rantissi told AFP. But he ruled out the prospect of a formal truce. “We cannot talk about a truce while the Israeli aggression continues,” Rantissi said.
Sharon’s meeting with Putin came as Russia struggles to defend a peace plan that it helped draft with the help of the United States, United Nations and European Union, which foresees establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel by 2005. Israeli officials said that Sharon wanted Putin to concede that the plan, the “road map”, was now in doubt amid the continued violence, and that a new approach was needed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Qorei has made the securing of a mutual cease-fire with Israel the top priority of his new government. His foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, on a visit to Madrid yesterday, said the new government would “launch immediately into discussions with the Israelis to obtain a strong and lasting cease-fire”.
Qorei has been heading an eight-man emergency government since the beginning of last month but its term of office is due to expire late today.
The former speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), or parliament, met with Arafat yesterday in the West Bank town of Ramallah to discuss the new lineup. In brief comments to reporters after their talks, Qorei said that discussions were still continuing over who should take up the key interior minister portfolio.
Rafiq Al-Natshe was elected to succeed Qorei as PLC speaker yesterday after obtaining the vote of 53 out of the 70 deputies who attended the session in Ramallah.
Violence continued on the ground as a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber who was being hunted by Israeli security services blew up himself up near the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya. There were no other casualties in the explosion in the village of Azun, close to the Jewish settlement of Shavei Shomron, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.
