AP
Israelis Assure Powell on Settlements
Date: Tue, Sep 21, 2004
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
NEW YORK - Israel assured the Bush administration on Tuesday it would build no new Jewish settlements on the West Bank or in Gaza but did not promise to stop "natural growth" of existing communities as families grow larger.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom gave the assurances to Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) after President Bush (news - web sites), in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, called for a freeze on settlements on land where the Palestinians hope to establish a state.
"We are committed not to build more settlements, not to extend or enlarge them," Shalom said after his 40-minute meeting with Powell. Also, Shalom said Israel would remove some two dozen remaining temporary outposts in the territories it seized from the Arabs in 1967. That request also was registered by Bush in a speech that urged world leaders to halt support for any Palestinian leader who betrays the cause of the Palestinians.
Shalom said, "You cannot force young people who are getting married out of their villages, their settlements. You cannot do it."
Bush, in his speech, called the Palestinians "long-suffering" and said they deserve "true leaders capable of creating and governing a free and peaceful Palestinian state."
It was another step by the Bush administration to try to persuade the Palestinians to ostracize Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), their longtime leader and symbol of resistance, from leading the Palestinians toward the state that Bush has advocated arising next year.
"It was a good speech," Shalom said later at his hotel.
The foreign minister outlined for Powell Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s timetable for withdrawing from Gaza beginning next March.
Shalom said Powell did not press him for assurances the withdrawal would be only the first step in a wider pullout.
The foreign minister is using talks with other leaders attending the special session of the U.N. General Assembly to try to reverse decades of condemnation of Israel in Assembly resolutions.
He said he had asked for Powell's assistance, and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told him Germany would introduce a resolution in the assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.
Shalom said the assembly approved 26 resolutions condemning Israel last year while world poverty, oppression in Sudan and other major concerns were virtually ignored.
He said he intends to ask Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) to help Israel to reduce anti-Israel resolutions and already had met with leaders of a half-dozen Arab countries in trying to rally support for democracy in the Middle East.
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