Sharon and Abbas meet to agree ceasefire deal
With a verbal ceasefire deal in hand, Israeli and Palestinian leaders met at a Mideast summit today for face-to-face talks and goodwill gestures aimed at ending four years of violence and entering a new era of peace talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas went into a brief meeting at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik about two hours after the summit began.
It was their first meeting since Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader after Arafat’s November death.
An invitation to both sides to meet separately with US President George Bush at the White House this spring added another round of momentum on the summit’s eve.
The ceasefire agreement to be announced today will not be a formal written document, but instead a verbal declaration by each side to halt violence, said a senior Israeli government official.
Abbas will declare an end to violence against Israelis, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will declare an end to Israeli military operations, said Gideon Meir, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
“We are talking here about the end of violence,” Meir said. “The Palestinian leader will talk about the end of violence, and the Israeli leader will talk about the cessation of military activity.”
In addition, Meir said that Israel will accept that in the short term the Palestinian Authority will not actively be cracking down on militant groups. However, in the long term, that must be done because otherwise “the Palestinian terrorist organisations will have the ability to derail the peace process, hijack the peace process,” Meir said.
Another senior Israeli government official made clear, however, that the halt to Israeli military operations still depended on a halt to Palestinian violence.
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