A US mediator set up a three-way meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials, designed to bring premiers together and restart long-stalled talks on a peace plan to end more than three years of bitter violence.
The session was set for yesterday afternoon, with top aides to the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers taking part along with a US diplomat, officials said.
PHOTO: AP
The goal was to schedule a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qureia, a first step to unfreezing negotiations over the US-backed "road map" plan.
US envoy David Satterfield has been meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials, indicating that the US government is running out of patience with the failure to move the road map forward.
Officials from the two sides have met repeatedly in recent weeks to try to set up a meeting between Sharon and Qureia, but no date has been set.
Qureia wants assurances that he will not leave the meeting empty-handed, while Sharon has said he will not accept preconditions for a summit. Qureia was hoping to take a Palestinian agreement for a cease-fire to a summit, but talks among Palestinian factions in Cairo did not produce such an accord.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said yesterday's meeting "will discuss ways to implement the road map," declining to elaborate.
The road map envisages an independent Palestinian state by 2005. In the first of three phases, it requires the Palestinians to crack down on militants and the Israelis to freeze settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But the plan has been stalled for months.
Sharon and his deputy have hinted in recent days that if peace efforts fail, Israel could take unilateral action, including abandoning settlements in Gaza. Sharon is expected to outline his plans on Thursday in a speech to a symposium on national security in the Israeli city of Herzliya.
The comments have unnerved Israeli settlers, who say that talk of a withdrawal has invited violence such as Sunday's mortar barrage in Gaza.
The army said that 21 shells had hit the Gush Katif settlement bloc in southern Gaza over 24 hours, causing minor damage.
"Unfortunately, so long as we get closer to the Herzliya conference, the bombings will increase," said Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gaza settlers.
Early yesterday, Israeli forces backed by about two dozen tanks raided the Khan Younis refugee camp near the bloc of settlements. Palestinian residents of the camp said the army demolished eight buildings -- three of them abandoned, and five of them houses that people don't sleep in at night due to frequent firefights in the area.
The military said the goal of the operation was to destroy buildings used by militants for firing mortars. A fierce gun battle erupted during the raid, but no casualties were reported.
In other violence on Sunday, Israeli troops shot and killed an armed Islamic Jihad fugitive near the West Bank town of Ramallah, the army said. The army said the man had a semiautomatic weapon and rounds of ammunition. Later, troops arrested two other Islamic Jihad militants, the army said.
Also on Sunday, the Islamic militant group Hamas staged rallies in the West Bank and Gaza to mark its 16th anniversary. Hundreds of marchers dressed up as suicide bombers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing