VARIOUS: EU MIDEAST ENVOY MIGUEL MORATINOS MEETS WITH ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SILVAN SHALOM

Record ID: 645899

  • Title: VARIOUS: EU MIDEAST ENVOY MIGUEL MORATINOS MEETS WITH ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SILVAN SHALOM
  • Date: 19th June 2003
  • Summary: (W6) GAZA (JUNE 19, 2003) (REUTERS) MV HAMAS REPRESENTATIVES ARRIVING FOR MEETING WITH PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER MAHMOUD ABBAS (MAN ON FAR LEFT IN BEIGE SHIRT IS HAMAS REPRESENTATIVE MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR (4 SHOTS) MV PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER MAHMOUD ABBAS ARRIVING IN CAR; MV SECURITY; SLV EXTERIOR OF PALESTINIAN LIBERATION ORGANISATION BUILDING (7 SHOTS) Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 4th July 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, WEST BANK/EYAL JUNCTION, ISRAEL/GAZA
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA3IH7HETH8QX4JMZSXYFUEJSN7
  • Story Text: In a break in talks with European Union (E.U.) Mideast envoy Miguel Moratinos in Jerusalem Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has said that the Palestinian Authority must control "terror" before a "road map" for peace can move forward.
    Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has toured the site of Tuesday night's Palestinian militant attack which left a seven-year-old Israeli girl dead.
    Representatives of the radical Hamas group have held talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who is trying to bring militant Islamic factions around to a truce declaration meant to shore up the latest U.S.-backed peace plan.
    Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met the European Union's Mideast envoy, Miguel Moratinos in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning (June 18, 2003) to discuss the newest Mideast peace plan.
    In a media opportunity during the meeting, Shalom said the Palestinian Authority must curb Palestinian militants if the "road map" peace plan for the Mideast were to move forward. He said: "I think if all of us will be determined in our demands from the Palestinians to put an end to the violence and to dismantle the infrastructure of the terror organizations, they will do so. Otherwise, I think the chance to get progress in the peace process will be very limited."
    The "road map" envisages the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, mandates a crackdown on militant groups along with Israeli troop pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza.
    Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said: "Concerning the transfer of security responsibility to the Palestinians, this process is now in labour pains."
    He was speaking during a visit to the site near Kibbutz Eyal in central Israel where a Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli girl in an attack on a car on Tuesday.
    Medics said the dead girl was seven and identified two people wounded in the attack as her five-year-old sister and her father.
    Two militant groups, one within Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed joint responsibility for Tuesday's attack on the car.
    The Israeli army said the attack was carried out by Palestinians firing from a house in the West Bank border town of Qalqilya.
    Israeli forces searched houses in the West Bank city of Ramallah for Palestinian militants on Wednesday.
    More than 50 people have died in tit-for-tat Israeli-Palestinian attacks since Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon affirmed the peace "road map" at a summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4.
    Israeli security sources announced on Wednesday that Israel had agreed to curb "track-and-kill" operations against Palestinian militants in a deal struck with U.S. officials to help them salvage the new peace plan which has been torn by violence.
    Hopes for the "road map" received a boost from Israel's reported pledge to hit only militants seen as imminent attack threats and not top political figures, and from a decision by leading Islamic radical faction Hamas to revive separate truce talks with Abbas.
    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ruled out any progress on the "road map" unless the Palestinian Authority subdues 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.
    Although Abbas failed in another bid on Tuesday (June 17) to coax a ceasefire from militant groups, on Wednesday Hamas resumed direct talks with him on his request for a ceasefire to advance the "road map" peace initiative.
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