Sharon Rejects Arafat’s Call to Restart Talks

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called Saturday for Israel’s new government to resume negotiations where the old one left off, but a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared the request a nonstarter.

“We are ready to move forward in the negotiations, and if [Israel’s government] wanted, we are ready to immediately resume the negotiations which we had started with the previous government,” Arafat said in a speech opening a session of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip.

His generally conciliatory address was the latest in a series of overtures that Arafat and Sharon, for decades implacable enemies, have made to each other since Sharon’s landslide victory over Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Feb. 6. But although the tone of their public utterances has been civil, the two leaders seem to be speaking past each other in matters of substance.

“Let the negotiations over the permanent status be resumed from the point it had left off,” Arafat said. “This is the only efficient and logical way to reach a clear security formula and a strong basis for coming agreements.”

Both Barak and Sharon have said publicly that concessions offered to the Palestinians during the final weeks of Barak’s center-left government are no longer valid and do not bind Sharon’s broad-based, right-leaning coalition. The prime minister has said he will negotiate with the Palestinians only if they stop a revolt that erupted in late September after Sharon visited a disputed holy site in Jerusalem.

“The prime minister has said so many times that he is willing to establish channels of communication to end the violence and the incitement,” said Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin, “but there will be no negotiations under fire.”

If Arafat wants talks to restart, Gissin said, he should call publicly on his people to stop attacking Israeli soldiers and civilians and resume cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces.

Sharon has said that, once the two sides begin negotiations, he will offer the Palestinians long-term interim arrangements that would leave them with the 42% of the West Bank they now control.

But Arafat has called repeatedly for talks to resume where they left off, with Barak offering to share sovereignty over Jerusalem and give the Palestinians about 95% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip to form a Palestinian state.

“Well, at least they’re talking,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, reached by telephone Saturday night in Cairo. “Sharon didn’t choose Arafat, Arafat didn’t choose Sharon, but their people chose them and they will meet--when they will meet, I don’t know, but they will meet.”

The prime minister’s office insisted Saturday that the two leaders will not meet before Sharon leaves for Washington in a little more than a week. He is scheduled to unveil his peace plan in his first meeting with President Bush on March 20 and to address the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

As Sharon prepares to make his case to the Bush administration and to American Jews for pursuing a more cautious, gradual approach to peacemaking, Arafat signaled his readiness to press on toward a comprehensive solution.

“Our hearts are open, and our hands are stretched out for the peace of the brave . . . we are ready to move forward in the negotiations with the Israeli government,” Arafat said. He spoke at the first meeting of the legislative council since the Palestinian uprising began. Since September, more than 400 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians, and thousands have been wounded in violence that erupted after peace talks broke down and that led to the collapse of Barak’s government.

Palestinian police reported Saturday that a 25-year-old man was found dead on a road heavily patrolled by Israelis near the Karni border crossing in Gaza. A local hospital said he had been killed by shrapnel.

Arafat addressed the Israeli people directly in his speech. “I say to the Israeli people and to its elected government . . . that we understand their need for security and for safety. But they have to understand our needs and the rights of the Palestinian people and of the Arab nations and to respect our holy Islamic and Christian sites.”

He criticized Israel’s policy of “siege and closure” against the Palestinians. “It should be stopped as well as the military escalation and the use of internationally illegal weapons” by Israel, he said. Arafat has accused Israel of using depleted-uranium bullets against Palestinians, a charge Israel has flatly denied and for which there is no evidence.

Since Sharon’s victory, Arafat has sent messages of congratulation to the hard-liner and asked for negotiations to resume. Sharon sent greetings to the Palestinian leader--whom he referred to just last year in an interview as a “murderer” and with whom he refuses to shake hands--on the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The two have talked once on the telephone, when Sharon reportedly promised to ease economic and travel restrictions on the Palestinians if Arafat brings a halt to attacks on Israeli troops and civilians.

But they seem far from finding enough common ground to resume negotiations, although Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, in his first working meeting with Sharon last week, urged that negotiations begin again even before the violence subsides.

Arafat’s speech Saturday “was all very nice,” said Gissin, Sharon’s spokesman, “but steps on the ground have to be taken before talks can resume.”