Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will press US President Bill Clinton at their meeting this week for an international force in the occupied territories and the establishment of an investigative committee into more than five weeks of violence, senior negotiator Saeb Erakat said Monday.
Erakat also said Arafat would insist there could be no peace accord with Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Clinton is due to meet Arafat on Thursday ahead of separate talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday aimed at quelling the unrest that has claimed the lives of close to 180 people, most of them Palestinian.
"Arafat will inform Clinton that if any solution does not include Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state it will be completely rejected by the Palestinians," Erakat told a meeting of the Palestinian legislative council in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Barak last month declared a "time out" in the seven year peace process because of the violence, which flared two months after the collapse of the Camp David summit in July.
"The question of an international presence to guarantee the eviction of the occupation forces and the establishment of a international investigative committee will also be on the agenda," Erakat said.
Erakat said the Palestinians were demanding that former South African leader Nelson Mandela be represented on the committee along with a representative from the Non-Aligned Movement, but that both proposals were rejected by Israel.
Last week, the Palestinian observer at the United Nations suggested deployment of 2,000 UN military observers to protect Palestinian civilians from Israeli forces.
But Barak said Monday that Israel was "adamantly opposed" to any such international force in the territories.
At the Sharm el-Sheikh summit last month, the two leaders pledged to take measures to restore order, such as denouncing the violence publicly, ending Israeli blockades of the Palestinian territories, and resuming security cooperation.
They had also agreed to an inquiry to determine what sparked the violence and how to put an end to it definitely, with the long-term goal of resuming peace talks that ground to a halt following the failed Camp David summit in July.
Erakat, who visited Washington last week, also said Arafat will visit Moscow and several European states after his Washington trip, but no further details were immediately available -- RAMALLAH (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
