ISRAEL/GAZA: PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER MAHMOUD ABBAS HAS FAILED TO PERSUADE MILITANTS TO CALL A TRUCE WITH ISRAEL
Record ID:
400806
ISRAEL/GAZA: PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER MAHMOUD ABBAS HAS FAILED TO PERSUADE MILITANTS TO CALL A TRUCE WITH ISRAEL
- Title: ISRAEL/GAZA: PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER MAHMOUD ABBAS HAS FAILED TO PERSUADE MILITANTS TO CALL A TRUCE WITH ISRAEL
- Date: 17th June 2003
- Summary: (U7) GAZA (JUNE 17, 2003) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SLV EXTERIOR OF OFFICE BUILDING 0.02 2. SLV PALESTINIAN SECURITY GUARDING AREA 0.20 3. SV SENIOR HAMAS LEADER ISMAIL ABU SHANAB TALKING TO REPORTERS 0.23 4. MCU (English) SENIOR HAMAS LEADER, ISMAIL ABU-SHANAB, SAYING: "We met with Abu Mazen here with a whole committee in cooperat
- Embargoed: 2nd July 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: EYAL JUNCTION AND PETAH-TIKVA, ISRAEL AND GAZA
- City:
- Country: Gaza Israel
- Reuters ID: LVA8WMVPXR0Q2REEQIFNEDDSQQQ7
- Story Text: Following a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza City a senior member of Hamas said no
breakthrough on a ceasefire has been reached but discussions
will continue. Meanwhile in Israel violence has continued after a
Palestinian gunman opened fire on a car killing a
seven-year-old girl.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday
(June 17) failed to persuade militants to call a truce with
Israel, in another blow to a peace plan U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell will try to save during a Middle East
visit.
"Regarding the issue of the ceasefire, it is still under
discussion and we have no response up to this moment," Ismail
Abu Shanab, a senior leader of the Islamic group Hamas said
after Abbas met with 13 radical factions.
But Abu Shanab said a bilateral meeting between Hamas and
Abbas might be held on Wednesday (June 18).
No breakthrough had been expected.
Facing the prospect of the collapse of the "road map" to peace, the
United States said Powell would come to the region on Friday for talks
with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
He said U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
was likely to follow Powell to Israel on June 29.
Powell was last in Israel and the Palestinian territories
in May ahead of a June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, in which
U.S. President George W. Bush, Abbas and Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon affirmed the road map that envisages
Palestinian statehood by 2005.
Since the three-way gathering, tit-for-tat
Israeli-Palestinian attacks have killed more than 50 people
and stymied U.S. attempts to put the peace plan into motion.
Sharon has ruled out concessions unless Abbas subdued
Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group at the forefront of
suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis since the
start of a Palestinian uprising for statehood in September
2000.
But senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials have
been holding talks on an Israeli offer to pull troops out of
the northern Gaza Strip and West Bank city of Bethlehem, a
proposal that appeared to depend on the outcome of truce
efforts.
The already-battered road map calls for
confidence-building steps including a Palestinian crackdown on
militants and a freeze in the expansion of Jewish settlements
on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Shortly after Abbas' meeting with militant factions in
Gaza City, Palestinian gunmen attacked a car on a road in
central Israel, killing a seven-year-old girl and wounding
another child and an adult.
One of the vehicles caught fire in an open field.
As an Israeli helicopter hovered over the site of the
shooting, dozens of Israeli security personnel and military
forces conducted searches in the area.
Since the three-way gathering in Jordan, tit-for-tat
Israeli-Palestinian attacks have killed more than 50 people
and stymied U.S. attempts to put the peace plan into motion.
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