World Will Back Abbas, Blair Asserts

At an international meeting Tuesday to help Palestinian leaders prepare for statehood, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the world would back President Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to rein in militants and build a lawful government and healthy institutions.

The effect of the one-day meeting, attended by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a score of foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East, was to give the Palestinians a feeling they are no longer isolated, Abbas said.

“We are confident that the international community has become interested in our cause ... and the security of the region is the security of the whole international community,” the Palestinian Authority president said.

The final 17-page agreement spelled out actions by the Palestinians to prepare for statehood, including steps to reduce its multiplicity of security forces to just three groups under centralized command.

Though the meeting was not primarily about raising money for the Palestinian Authority, Blair said the European Union had committed $330 million and the United States an additional $350 million to support the Palestinians’ efforts to reform their administration and economy.

Speaking in the wake of a suicide bombing Friday in Tel Aviv that killed five people and cast a shadow over a 3-week-old truce, Abbas pledged that he and his Palestinian colleagues would do all that had been promised to prevent terrorism under a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map. He urged Israelis to do the same.

However, Abbas argued that security would not be possible unless there were significant moves by Israel toward ending occupation of land claimed by the Palestinians.

“Experience has taught us that individual security measures, which are not part of a serious political path, do not achieve peace and security,” he said. “For us as Palestinians, we are going forward to put our house in order and to address our commitments.... We only have one demand, which is reciprocity, according to the main elements of the road map.”

Blair said progress between Israelis and Palestinians would reduce terrorism around the world, and he said the meeting had provided the Palestinian Authority with a “very clear script” to transform itself into a full-fledged democratic state once peace was achieved with Israel.

“The benefit ... will not just be felt by the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Blair said. “It will be felt by all of us.

“President Abbas and his colleagues have made it very clear they will do what is necessary,” he said. “What they ask in return, however, is that Israel, if those obligations are being fulfilled, also make the moves necessary on its part.”

Blair said it had become clearer to all the parties where the peace process was headed: toward a two-state solution.

The Palestinian state should be “viable, not just in terms of its territory, which should be contiguous ... but viable also in terms of its institutions,” he said.

Rice said the conference would help the Palestinians prepare for coming parliamentary elections and build institutions “that are transparent, institutions that are accountable, institutions that are democratic.”

Islamic Jihad, a militant group with offices in Syria, claimed responsibility for Friday’s suicide bombing, the first since Palestinian and Israeli officials declared a cease-fire Feb. 8. Abbas said his administration was seeking those responsible.

Israel did not attend the meeting because it was focused on helping the Palestinians reform their authority in preparation for statehood, Blair said.

There was debate among Israelis over whether it was wise to sit out the conference.

“It’s very possible that had we been there, we could have had influence,” said Moshe Raviv, a former Israeli ambassador to Britain. “The wording, when done by an international forum, will never be identical to the wording Israel is seeking.”

Other Israelis expressed approval of the conference goals.

“Israel supports international efforts to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and help it build transparent institutions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

As the gathering took place, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon renewed demands that the Palestinian leaders act decisively against militant groups. Thus far, Abbas’ strategy has been to try to negotiate with organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“I am very sorry the Palestinian leadership is still hesitating over the need to fight terror,” Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel’s Army Radio. “It has to be clear that as long as they don’t take the strategic decision to dismantle terrorist infrastructure, we cannot truly advance toward peace.”

The difficulties faced by Abbas in his dealings with the militant groups were illustrated Tuesday when his new interior minister, Nasser Yousef, visited the West Bank town of Jenin. Half a dozen militants greeted Yousef, who is Abbas’ point man on security, by firing shots into the air and demanding that he get out of town.

Yousef called in police reinforcements and ordered that the militants be arrested, but then a compromise was brokered.

The interior minister met with militant leader Zakariya Zubeidi and did not have any of his followers detained. However, he fired the town’s security chief.

Underscoring security jitters in the wake of the Tel Aviv bombing, Israeli authorities reported Tuesday that an enormous car bomb had been safely detonated in the northern West Bank.

Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem contributed to this report.