Israeli Cabinet Backs Palestinian Talks

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won backing Sunday from nearly all his Cabinet ministers for having initiated his first talks with Palestinian officials since his election, and he said he will hold more such meetings.

Jewish settlers and the far right blasted Sharon’s session with a trio of senior Palestinian officials last week, saying it violated his pledge not to negotiate under fire. But most Cabinet ministers praised it as a breakthrough after more than 16 months of fighting.

“If there’s a chance in it to achieve a cease-fire, it will be desirable and acceptable to all of us,” said Interior Minister Eli Yishai, of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel Two television, however, Sharon made it clear Sunday night that his new willingness to talk to the Palestinians does not extend to their leader, Yasser Arafat. Israel has kept Arafat confined to the West Bank city of Ramallah for two months, saying he will be free to move about only if he arrests the killers of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was shot to death in October. The government also has declared Arafat “irrelevant,” a term Sharon used again to describe the besieged Palestinian Authority president.

Political sources in Jerusalem said Sharon still intends to ask President Bush to sever ties with Arafat. The Israeli leader is to visit the White House on Thursday.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was pleased with the meeting between Sharon and the Palestinian officials.

“I’m going to be conducting the same kinds of dialogue with the Palestinian Authority,” Powell said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Powell said he is “pleased to see that Prime Minister Sharon met with a number of them the other day, and I will be meeting with them as well in the days ahead, trying to get this process started.” The United States, Powell said, “can’t walk away from the current crisis in the Middle East.”

Arafat Makes Overture With Newspaper Article

On Channel Two, Sharon dismissed Arafat’s latest overture to Israelis, an article published in Sunday’s New York Times. Arafat wrote that the Palestinians are ready to end their conflict with Israel and will take Israel’s demographic concerns into consideration in trying to resolve the fate of Palestinian refugees. He also said he will arrest militants who attack Israeli civilians.

“Arafat talks on,” Sharon said. “Certainly the comments were written in softer language. When it comes to talking, he does it well.”

But the article did not persuade him, Sharon said, adding, “I suggest that he doesn’t persuade anyone.” Arafat, he said, “is irrelevant.”

In contrast to his dismissive approach to Arafat, Sharon described the meeting he held at his official Jerusalem residence Wednesday night with a trio of senior Palestinian officials as “a respectful and positive one” in which “both sides spoke their heart.” He insisted that the focus of the meeting, which started with dinner and lasted past midnight, was security.

Sharon said that he discussed only one political subject with the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Ahmed Korei; Arafat’s unofficial deputy, Mahmoud Abbas; and Arafat’s financial advisor, Mohammed Rashid. That subject was the negotiations that Korei has been conducting with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

There is “a profound difference,” Sharon said he told Korei, between the peace plan Peres is promoting and Sharon’s vision of an agreement.

Peres has proposed that Israel immediately recognize a Palestinian state in more than 40% of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The two sides would then, within an agreed-upon time frame, negotiate unresolved “final-status” issues, such as the fate of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes when the Jewish state was created in 1948.

Sharon Says He Opposes Foreign Minister’s Plan

Sharon said he did not discuss the question of a Palestinian state with his guests. But he said he told them that he objects to Peres’ proposal that the negotiations proceed according to a timetable.

“I am speaking about a stage in which there is a development in our relationship that leads to a cease-fire or a non-fighting status,” he said. Only after agreed-upon measures were implemented by both sides, he said, would they proceed to discussing final-status issues.

Sharon said he demanded of the Palestinians that they arrest “terrorists” and dismantle Palestinian militias, including Arafat’s presidential guard, Force 17, and the Tanzim militia of Arafat’s Fatah movement. He said he told the Palestinians that they must also confiscate illegal weapons and hand them over to the United States, take unspecified preventive measures to stop attacks on Israelis and end incitement.

The prime minister said he invited the Palestinian officials to his home because “I have noticed lately that the Palestinians don’t fully understand what the Israeli demands are which are necessary to proceed with a diplomatic process.”

According to Palestinian officials, the Palestinians demanded a halt to Israel’s “targeted killings” of militants--slayings the Palestinians call assassinations. They also asked Sharon to allow Arafat freedom of movement, stop incursions into Palestinian-controlled territories and end Israel’s blockades of Palestinian towns and villages.

No agreements were reached, but the two sides did hold a security meeting Friday, the first after a lengthy hiatus.

Speaking in Ramallah on Saturday, Arafat said he had authorized the meeting with Sharon.

“I have given my directions to continue with these meetings,” he said.

The secret meeting had the trappings of a Hollywood thriller, political analyst Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “But unfortunately, very little happened between the movie’s opening sequence and its end: We drove, we ate, we drank, we talked, we drove.”

Sharon and Arafat, said Barnea, had a tactical interest in the meeting before Sharon heads for Washington.