Reuters
US Wants Israel to Explain Comment on Peace Process
Date: Thu, Oct 07, 2004
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States wants Israel to further explain an Israeli official's statement that Israel aims to freeze the peace process and effectively deny the Palestinians a state, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s chief of staff Dov Weisglass told Haaretz newspaper that Sharon's plan to withdraw from all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) and four on the West Bank aimed to rule out a Palestinian state indefinitely.
Sharon, wary of alienating Israel's key ally, on Wednesday said he still supported the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan which Weisglass effectively dismissed but his assurances do not appear to have satisfied Washington.
"They've got to explain Weisglass," said a senior State Department official who spoke to reporters on condition that he not be identified. "We think it still bears some explanation ... That's a job that they need to do."
The official's comments reflected rare criticism of Israel by the Bush administration, which generally supports the Sharon government and its military operations against Palestinians, which Israel says aim to stop Palestinian suicide attacks.
Weisglass's message, coinciding with a big Israeli offensive in Gaza, could help Sharon win over far-right foes who oppose his plan to abandon some Jewish settlements and who may challenge his grip on power.
"The significance of our disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians," Weisglass told Haaretz in comments published on Wednesday.
"When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state ... Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda," he added.
The United States has sought to cast Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" plan as workable within the U.S.-backed "road map," whose key elements included Palestinian efforts to stop attacks on Israel, a freeze on Israeli settlement activity and the target of creating a Palestinian state by next year.
The Quartet of the United States, United Nations (news - web sites), European Union (news - web sites) and Russia, which drafted the peace plan, on Sept. 22 bluntly acknowledged that "no significant progress has been achieved on the road map."
SOURCE
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