Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said talks between a Palestinian delegation and senior US officials in Washington had been "positive". The talks "were positive and constructive and contained elements that will have good results on the political, economic and security levels," Arafat told Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite television channel from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Additionally, Arafat called for a "vigorous and rapid action from the international community, notably the quartet" of the US, UN, European Union and Russia, to "put an end to the current situation in the Palestinian territories."
Arafat added the United States that U.S., Egyptian and Jordanian officials would oversee reforms to Palestinian security services. "There is an agreement that Americans, Egyptians and Jordanians will come and administer the training of our security branches," said the Palestinian leader. Asked if the program would start in the near future, Arafat said: "We hope so," but he gave no timetable for implementation.
Hamas
Meanwhile, Hamas dismissed as futile any Palestinian crackdown on activists. "If the PA (Palestinian Authority) wants to confront the resistance it must confront the Palestinian people," Usama Hamdan, who heads Hamas in Lebanon, told Reuters in Beirut on Friday.
He said the group would target Israeli leaders to avenge Israel's tactic of tracking and killing top operatives. "From here on out, targeting a leader, minister, or the head of the government of the Zionists entity will be treatment in kind, particularly since they are giving the orders (to kill Palestinians)," Hamdan said. "The Palestinian response...will extend to the killers and it will extend to those who consent to being ruled by the killers."
On Washington talks, Hamdan said Israel hoped to use those talks to get the assistance of the PA in targeting military activists, with the goal of igniting a Palestinian civil war. "Sharon's proposal...stipulates the arrest of certain people and house arrest. It stipulates a Palestinian civil war and internal confrontation," he said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
