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TITLE: Israel Will Offer 'Final Agreement in Stages' |
AUTHOR: Aluf Benn |
PUB: Ha'aretz |
DATE: April 29, 2001 |
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Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is bringing Jordan and Egypt a proposal for "staged progress toward a final agreement" with the Palestinians as Israel's core response to the two Arab countries' initiative to quell the violence between Israel and the Palestinians. He is to meet separately today with Jordanian King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak before heading to Washington for meetings with top U.S. administration officials. According to Peres' idea, progress toward a final agreement would not be an all-or-nothing move, as during the Barak administration, but rather a series of agreements that would integrate elements of confidence-building with elements of the final agreement. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is vehemently opposed to seeking a final agreement with the Palestinians now, preferring what he has been calling a "long-term interim agreement." Peres appears to be seeking a compromise between a promise of a final agreement and Sharon's insistence on a long-term deal. Peres and Sharon met twice over the weekend to hammer out their position on the Jordanian-Egyptian initiative. The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement this weekend saying that "the discussions in Egypt and Jordan are aimed at ending the terror and violence and thus to form the necessary basis for a resumption of the political negotiations." A diplomatic source in Jerusalem said that "Peres is going without a paper, with our general impressions. We don't want it to appear as negotiations, but rather as a response to two very important countries in the region." Peres will be telling Abdullah and Mubarak that Israel wants concrete evidence of a Palestinian Authority crackdown on violence, including weapons collections, and arrests of known terrorists, as the PA committed itself to do in signed agreements with Israel. The two main elements in the Arab initiative that Israel wants to see changed are the insistence on an absolute freeze in settlement activity, and the setting of a deadline for completion of the peace negotiations. The prime minister rejects a deadline, claiming it handcuffs the negotiators. As for the settlements, Israel will be proposing a "natural growth" exclusion on the settlement freeze, with a promise, as per the national unity government guidelines, of no new settlement construction. END |