The US on Thursday renewed longstanding demands for a crackdown on anti-Israeli violence as three US envoys met Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei to press the point.
The State Department said Qorei's renunciation of attacks against Israeli civilians -- made on Wednesday in a speech to the Palestinian parliament -- was "noteworthy" but meant little without solid action against militant groups.
"Abu Ala's comments, I think, are noteworthy," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said, using Qorei's nom-de-guerre.
"It's important to publicly renounce terrorism and say that terrorism, in addition to being wrong and horrific, undermines the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
"So that's certainly welcome," he told reporters. "But what's also necessary are taking concrete actions against terror and that's something that we've been calling for the Palestinian Authority to do. It remains a top priority."
Ereli spoke after the three US envoys -- Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and National Security Council Middle East affairs head Elliot Abrams -- met with Qorei in the West Bank town of Jericho.
The trio later saw Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem.
Ereli said both sets of discussions centered around Sharon's proposal for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, steps to bring the two sides back to the US-backed roadmap for peace and promoting Palestinian political, economic and educational reform.
He declined to offer further details.
In Jericho after meeting Burns, Hadley and Abrams, Qorei said he had sought US guarantees that Sharon's plan to evacuate most of Gaza Strip would not stymie attempts for a comprehensive agreement to end the conflict.
And, he warned the Americans that unilateral moves would be counterproductive.
Sharon has said he has no option but to implement unilateral measures in the absence of progress in the bilateral peace process with the Palestinians but has said he will only proceed with the Gaza withdrawal if he has the support of the US.
Washington has voiced interest in the proposal but has withheld its backing.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS