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Former Israeli PM Says Israel Ready for Cease-Fire, Peace Talks
Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said Sunday that Israel was ready to call a cease-fire to help end a welter of violence that has undermined the Middle East peace process.
Peres, who is currently Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister, told BBC Television that his government was also ready to renew the peace negotiations with Palestinians.
"Israel is really ready to have a cease-fire immediately, we are ready to renew the peace negotiations and we think that we shouldn't postpone it," Peres said in an interview to BBC Television after attending a cabinet meeting of the Israeli government.
"I think that in 12 hours we have to have a complete cease-fire," the former Israeli prime minister said.
He made that comment after U.S. President Bill Clinton said Saturday that he would attend an emergency Middle East summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, a Red Sea resort in Egypt.
But officials from both Israel and Palestine were less optimistic over the weekend, making people doubt whether the talks might bring an end to the unrest and lead to a renewal of peacemaking.
At least 100 people, mostly Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, have been killed recently in fighting primarily in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.
The bloodshed has shut down the Middle East peace process that Clinton has worked for years to nurture.
Peres also said Barak had met with Israeli right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon Saturday night.
He said Barak had invited Sharon, whose visit to a Jerusalem shrine sparked the wave of Palestinian unrest, to join a "national emergency government."
"If the emergency will disappear, the need for such a government is no longer relevant," Peres said. "Nobody has a choice but to continue the peace. Any other alternative would be a tragedy for all parties concerned," he said.
The former Israeli prime minister added that Arafat had to show he could control his people.
"We cannot negotiate with the mob on the streets. We cannot negotiate with terror," he said.
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