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Palestinian Official Slams US for Siding with Israel
Saeb Erekat, Palestine's chief negotiator with the Israelis, on Friday slammed the US administration for adopting a biased stance on Israel's escalating attacks against the Palestinians.
"The first test for the current American administration is how it will handle the Mitchell commission report," Erekat said in an interview with the Cairo-based Voice of Arabs radio from the Palestinian town of Jericho.
Erekat, who is also Palestinian minister of local government, urged the U.S. government not to maintain its biased position, but support positive factors in the report of the international inquiry commission led by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell on the ongoing violence in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He held Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government responsible for "killing children, women, old people, and men as well as uprooting 204,000 trees in the Palestinian areas" since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation last September.
"The Sharon government has become a real threat to regional and international peace," he said.
More than 500 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed and thousands more injured during the more than seven months of violence.
The Mitchell committee, set up last October to probe the violence, presented a report last month, calling on Israel to stop violence and settlement activities.
The Palestinian side has welcomed the report as "very positive" while Sharon took reservations on it and refused to freeze the construction of Jewish settlement.
The U.S. government is scheduled to issue a formal suggestion after reviewing both sides' comments on the report.
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