United States President George W. Bush yesterday stopped short of cutting ties with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, despite promising Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at White House talks that Washington would keep pressuring Arafat to crack down on terror.
The outcome led Sharon to say later on Thursday that, as far as Israel was concerned, Arafat could never again be someone with whom it could do business.
"He's not a partner, he won't be a partner and he is irrelevant," Sharon told Israel-based reporters who had accompanied the right-wing prime minister on his fourth visit to Washington DC in a year.
Israeli tanks have kept Arafat under siege at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah for the past two months.
Sharon said that the heavier the pressure on Arafat, the greater the chances an alternative Palestinian leadership could emerge.
"Our pressure on him won't weaken but will grow," Sharon said. He called Arafat "directly responsible for Palestinian suffering" in an uprising against Israeli occupation that has claimed more than 1,000 lives, most of them Palestinian.
In Gaza City, the Palestinian National Authority yesterday accused Sharon of trying to destroy peace hopes.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "The Palestinian Authority refutes Sharon's remarks concerning the replacement of the current leadership and that President Yasser Arafat is 'irrelevant'."
Erekat said that Sharon "wants to destroy the peace process and the Palestinian Authority."
Earlier, at a joint appearance with Sharon in the Oval Office, Bush said: "I assured the prime minister that we will continue to keep pressure on Mr Arafat to convince him that he must take serious, concrete, real steps to reduce terrorist activity in the Middle East."
But Bush sidestepped a reporter's question on whether the United States would sever links with Arafat, as Sharon had demanded ahead of his Washington visit.
Sharon -- apparently pre-empted by comments by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer that US contact with Arafat remained "at the same level that it's been" - said he did not repeat the demand during his 50-minute session with Bush.
The United States has drawn criticism from some Arabs that it is pursuing a lopsided policy in the Middle East because Bush has yet to sit down with Arafat.
European officials have been particularly critical of Israel's decision to place a ring of armor around Arafat until he hands over the militants who assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister in October.
(China Daily February 9, 2002)
