14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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In Ramallah's shadow
US Vice-President Dick Cheney's agenda for his regional tour is being overshadowed by events in Palestine, reports Khaled Dawoud
President Hosni Mubarak met with US Vice President Dick Cheney at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh yesterday amid escalating Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The meeting came a week after the Egyptian leader's return from Washington, where he argued for greater US involvement in the peace process and increased pressure by Washington on Israel to end the violence.
Cheney arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh from Jordan, where King Abdullah had similarly urged the US to focus on ending 18 months of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.
Before Cheney's arrival, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher announced that "heading the subjects Egypt will raise is the grave situation in Palestine and continuing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people."
Israel's ongoing incursions into Palestinian territories were an "attempt to abort efforts to return the peace process to a positive course, represented by [US envoy Antony] Zinni's visit," he said.
Yet with former US General Zinni due in the region today there was no sign of a let- up in the Israeli assaults.
On Tuesday five Palestinians were killed during the Israeli invasion of Ramallah and yesterday Israeli tanks were prominent on the mostly deserted streets of the West Bank town, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
The deputy commander of the Palestinian security service Force 17 in Ramallah, and an Italian photographer, were both killed by tank fire yesterday, Palestinian officials said. And in separate incidents in the town a French photographer was shot twice in the leg and Israeli soldiers fired five rounds into a car transporting Egyptian television correspondent, Tareq Abdel-Gaber, who escaped unharmed.
The Ramallah incursion followed an overnight battle in a Gaza Strip refugee camp that left 19 Palestinians dead during a week that has witnessed the most intense violence since the Intifada began. And yesterday any possibility for a restoration of calm seemed further away than ever.
"A ceasefire is impossible as long as Ramallah is occupied, as long as they are putting snipers on the roofs of buildings in the city and killing civilians on the street," said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. "It would not be a ceasefire. It would be a kind of capitulation," he added.
Cheney's trip, intended to rally support for the US-led war on terror, comes amid feverish speculation that Iraq is next on Washington's hit list.
In Jordan King Abdullah warned Cheney that any strike on Iraq would have "dangerous effects on the security and stability of the region", arguing that Washington should direct its efforts at ending Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed.
Cheney, meanwhile, insisted that UN weapons inspectors must return to Iraq, and that the inspection regime has to be "wide open, robust, anywhere, everywhere, all the time, anytime," said Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise.
As Cheney's 11-nation tour progresses, US officials appear increasingly keen on playing down the Iraq angle publicly, though privately they suggest that condemnation from Arab leaders of US hints that it may act to topple Saddam Hussein are largely for domestic consumption.
Meeting US troops stationed in Sinai yesterday, Cheney said that the battles fought by their comrades in Afghanistan were "only the beginning of a long and unrelenting effort."
"The success of liberty and the future of the civilised world depend on us. Our next objective is to prevent terrorists, and regimes that sponsor terror, from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. We take this threat with great seriousness," he said.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, the UN Security Council passed a US-drafted resolution referring for the first time to a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.
The 14-0 vote, with Syria abstaining, was the first time the 15-nation council has approved a resolution on the Middle East since October 2000 and was the first recent text on the region to be written by Washington.
The Palestinian Authority welcomed the UN Security Council's resolution: "It is important and shows for the first time unanimity at the heart of the Security Council on the establishment of a Palestinian state," Nabil Abu Rudeina, adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said.
Resolution 1397 affirmed "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognised borders."
It went on to "demand the immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction," and called upon Israel and the Palestinians to take steps towards resuming peace talks.
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