Palestinian Official Denies Reports on "Secret Channel with Sharon"Palestinian Preventive Security Force chief for the West Bank Gabril Rajoub denied reports that he sought to establish a "secret contact channel" with Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon to resume security coordination.The conditions of establishing contacts with Sharon's government are not met at present, Rajoub told the Qatari Al-Jazirah satellite channel on Wednesday. What is needed first is the resumption of the talks between the two sides from where they were left off, he pointed out. Earlier in the day Radio Israel said that Rajoub discussed the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian security coordination during his recent meeting with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet in Washington. The radio quoted an Israeli Foreign Ministry report as saying that Rajoub criticized the ways Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his colleagues handled the talks with Israel in Taba, Egypt, in January. Rajoub said that the Palestinian leaders who entered the Palestinian territories in 1994 did not understand the mentality of their Israeli counterparts, according to the report. Meanwhile, Marawan Al-Barghouthi, secretary of Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement in the West Bank, said that he would reject any order from Arafat to stop the al-Aqsa intifada (uprising) which is about to enter its sixth month. Barghouthi considers the uprising as an expression of the feelings of the Palestinian people and believes that no body has the right to stop them. Tne ongoing violence between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers have killed over 420 people, the vast majority Palestinians, and injured thousands others, since it broke out in late September. |
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