Sharon Agrees to Hold Trilateral Meeting, Declare Ceasefire

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, March 17, 2002

Sharon Agrees to Hold Trilateral Meeting, Declare Ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a meeting Saturday night with visiting U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni and agreed to hold a trilateral meeting on Sunday.

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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a meeting Saturday night with visiting U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni and agreed to hold a trilateral meeting on Sunday.

During the trilateral meeting, an official ceasefire is expected to be jointly declared by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and the implementation of the U.S.-brokered Tenet ceasefire plan would commence.

Sharon will attend the meeting as Israel's representative, according to the radio, and Zinni will represent the United States.

However, it is not yet clear whether PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat, who currently confined to his headquarters at the West Bank city of Ramallah by Israel, will attend the trilateral meeting.

At a press conference Saturday night in Tel Aviv, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that Israel had told Zinni that it would no longer initiate any military operations against the Palestinians and would not respond to terror attacks against Israel.

Peres claimed that Israel said that it would only take actions against the PNA in the cases of what he has in the past referred to as "walking time-bombs."

The foreign minister added that the Israeli-Palestinian security meeting would resume in order to enable Israel's troops to withdraw from Palestinian-ruled Areas A in the West Bank.

As for the issue of international observers, Peres stressed that the observers could operate only after an agreement was reached between Israel and the PNA, and only if the Palestinians agreed to set up a central authority to take responsibility for actions carried out in its territory.

Earlier Saturday, Zinni met with senior Palestinian officials, including Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei, senior negotiator Saeb Erekat and cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Palestinian officials reiterated their demand before the U. S. envoy for Israel to "pull out of all re-occupied areas", stressing that the Palestinians would not hold any ceasefire talks before Israel withdraws its troops from the areas.

After their first meeting in Ramallah on Friday, Zinni said that he expected ceasefire talks between Israel and the Palestinians to begin within three days, after preliminary talks on "mechanisms" to end fighting.

"I am encouraged that we are going to identify the mechanisms that allow us to do that, and I think that in the next three days that we can start on my mission and on the implementation of the plan that we have brought," Zinni said.

The envoy has demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian-controlled areas during his first meeting Thursday night with Sharon, Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.

According to Zinni, Israel should first pull out its troops from Areas A, then a ceasefire is to be jointly declared by the two sides.

Afterward, the joint Israeli-Palestinian political committee, established under former prime minister Ehud Barak's administration, would convene and meet in parallel with the joint security committee.

When the situation is improved on the ground and there is a renewed mechanism for dialogue, Israel and the PNA will begin implementing the Tenet plan.

Zinni added that his mission is to see the plan implemented, and he wound remain in the region until it is materialized.

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