Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon headed to the US on Sunday facing a rare dispute with US President George W. Bush over the construction of a "separation fence" in the West Bank.
Sharon, who meets Bush at the White House on Tuesday, flew to Washington after his cabinet agreed to free 540 Palestinian prisoners in a bid to support Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and the US-backed "road map" to peace.
A senior official travelling with Sharon, whose plane made a brief refuelling stop at an air base in England, said the prisoner release "should happen in the coming week." Officials would meet in the next few days to finalize the list, he said.
Sharon has a hard act to follow -- a landmark visit to the White House on Friday by Abbas that cemented the new Palestinian leader's standing in Washington as a moderate intent on ending nearly three years of violence with Israel.
Hours before Sharon's plane took off for the US capital, an Israeli government spokesman said Israel would continue building the West Bank barrier it says it needs to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.
At the heart of the dispute over the fence -- a concrete wall in some places and a wire mesh with electronic sensors in others -- are plans to have it cut deep into the West Bank and loop around several Jewish settlements. Those plans have yet to be finalized.
Calling the fence "a problem," Bush said after meeting Abbas, "It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank."
A senior official accompanying Sharon to Washington declined to say what the Israeli leader would tell Bush about the West Bank fence at their talks on Tuesday.
But the official recalled that Sharon told Bush during a summit with Abbas in Jordan in June that the barrier was "not a political border but a security fence."
Palestinians condemn such plans as a land grab.
Sharon could seek to defuse the dispute with Bush over the issue by postponing construction of segments of the barrier that bulge sharply into the central West Bank.
He will arrive at the White House on his eighth visit since taking office carrying a package of confidence-building measures that Israel announced just hours before Bush and Abbas met.
They include the prisoner release, troop withdrawals and issuing more permits allowing Palestinians to enter Israel to work.
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
The tale of a middle-aged Chinese man, or “uncle,” who disguised himself as a woman to secretly film and share videos of his hookups with more than 1,000 men shook China’s social media, spurring fears for public health, privacy and marital fidelity. The hashtag “red uncle” was the top trending item on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo yesterday, drawing at least 200 million views as users expressed incredulity and shock. The online posts told of how the man in the eastern city of Nanjing had lured 1,691 heterosexual men into sexual encounters at his home that he then recorded and distributed online. The
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
CEREMONY EXPECTED: Abdullah Ocalan said he believes in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons, and called on the group to put that into practice The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group yesterday renewed a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state. In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber’s YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps. “It should be considered natural for you to publicly ensure the disarmament of the relevant groups in a way that addresses the expectations
RSS