Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Tuesday after a meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that he had agreed to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, reported AFP.
"Mr. Fischer proposed that Mr. Peres and I meet, and I announce to you that I accepted," Arafat told reporters, adding that the meeting would probably take place in Berlin.
"I welcome these good ideas and I welcome the suggestion to meet with Mr. Peres, and Mr. Fischer's suggestion to meet in his office in Berlin," he said.
Fischer called for the implementation of the internationally-backed peace plan proposed by the Mitchell Commission and published in May, which called for a seven-day ceasefire and a six-week cooling-off period.
"What we need is the beginning of the implementation of the Mitchell plan: not to invent a new wheel, but to make the existing wheel run," said Fischer, who met Peres late Monday in Tel Aviv.
Fischer, who said Germany would be on call to help "seven days a week, 24 hours a day," was to head on to occupied Jerusalem for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as part of his day of intense shuttle diplomacy to break the deadlock in the region.
Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath, who attended the meeting, also hailed the European initiative, which he compared favorably with the United States' perceived lack of a role in the conflict.
"President Arafat decided to give the Europeans the privilege of the initiative. Maybe this will stop the Israeli aggression and freeze the American license to kill given to the Israeli side," he said, as quoted by the agency.
Another Palestinian official said the talks focused on the cooling-off period in the Mitchell plan, "in which areas they would start and when."
However, Peres’s plan to meet with Arafat is not popular among all Israelis.
In a rare public appearance Monday, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak blasted Peres for plans to meet Arafat, saying the move conflicted with attempts to isolate the Palestinian president, reported Haaretz.
Without naming Peres, Barak attacked the foreign minister's efforts to engage Arafat in dialogue.
"You can't ask the foreign ministers of Germany, Britain or France not to meet with Arafat, if we're meeting with him. You can't ask the prime minister of Norway not to meet with him, if the person closest to the prime minister, does," said Barak, referring to Omri Sharon, the premier's son.
An angry Peres lashed back, said the paper, quoting him as saying, "I do not draw my legitimacy from Barak... [it] comes from the voters and not from others."
The foreign minister of Israel, which has hired several large PR firms to sway world opinion, said as late as Monday that he was not ready to meet Palestinian leaders for ceasefire talks as long as they were waging "media wars."
Peres told Israeli radio stations that he did not “understand the logic of the Palestinian officials…who ‘raid’ press microphones with provocative statements whenever they see them.”
“What do they want?” he asked, “Just shooting?”
The minister, who has been given the green light to start talks with the Palestinian Authority by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that publicity campaigns would not help solve the crisis.
Asked to comment on reports that Palestinian officials, including Arafat, were refusing to meet him, he said that in the last meeting with Arafat, the president told him "my door is always open for you."
Peres said that he would meet Arafat “when there is a need.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
