Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sharon and Abbas to meet in Egypt


A Palestinian police officer examines a tunnel in the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border, before it was destroyed Wednesday. Israel has long demanded that the Palestinian security forces destroy the tunnels.
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson Knight Ridder

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas agreed Wednesday to meet next week in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik in Egypt. The summit would be the highest level Israeli-Palestinian contact in four years.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak extended the invitation to the leaders to meet next Tuesday. King Abdullah II of Jordan also will attend.

The summit will provide the first real chance for Israel and the Palestinians to discuss peace issues since the death in late November of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom Sharon deeply distrusted and accused of backing terrorism.

Abbas, who won a decisive electoral victory as head of the Palestinian Authority in early January, has long opposed violence against Israel. Israel agreed last month to pull back from some military positions in the predominantly Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank after Abbas deployed Palestinian security forces in an effort to halt militants’ attacks on Israel.

Sharon and Abbas aides have stressed that next week’s summit must produce lasting, tangible results. Even so, the distance between the men is enormous.

Sharon wants the talks to focus on a single issue: ending Palestinian violence. He needs an end to the violence in order to quiet domestic political opponents so he can proceed with his proposed pullout of Jewish settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip next summer.

Abbas has his eye on far more, including a formal truce with Israel, the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and blanket amnesty for Palestinian militants.

A final meeting to resolve agenda issues is scheduled for today.

“It is basically very important to have a right beginning,” said Hassan Abu Libdeh, a senior Palestinian official.

“With Egypt now involved, Israel will have to deliver something that lives up to the occasion,” he added in comments that appeared to be intended to pressure Sharon for concessions.

Expectations are cautious nonetheless.

When Abbas was Arafat’s prime minister, he and Sharon embraced a U.S.-sponsored “road map” leading to an independent Palestinian state during a June 2003 summit with President Bush in Aqaba, Jordan. But fighting resumed two months later, after a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem killed 23 Israelis and injured 130.

“Everyone should understand the process is fragile, and if anything can torpedo this process it’s terrorism,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Wednesday, in a remark that appeared to be intended to pressure Abbas to crack down harder on militants.

The summit is surrounded by diplomatic activity involving the United States and other countries in the region.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Sharon in Jerusalem and Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, but isn’t scheduled to attend the summit.

The Bush administration is becoming more actively involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, although it remains to be seen whether it will make the sustained high-level effort that most outside experts think is necessary.

The administration is close to naming a special Middle East envoy, according to a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The envoy would facilitate confidence-building measures between Israelis and Palestinians and probably would be a midlevel Foreign Service officer rather than a household name, the official said.

In his State of the Union address Wednesday, President Bush announced nearly $350 million in U.S assistance to the Palestinians, far above previous levels.