Friday, October 5 10:45 PM SGT

White House takes Sharon to task over strong language as violence continues by Ned Parker

JERUSALEM, Oct 5 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was taken to task by Washington Friday for "unacceptable" comments on US Middle East policy, while a last-ditch Palestinian effort to salvage a wobbly ceasefire was shaken by further violence.

In a speech Thursday night, Sharon had told US President George W. Bush that, in forging an anti-terror coalition, he should not try "to conciliate the Arabs at our expense. We won't accept it."

He called on the Western democracies "not to commit again the terrible mistake made in 1938 when European democracies sacrificed Czechoslovakia for a temporary solution.

"Israel will not be Czechoslovakia," he warned.

He was alluding to the 1938 Munich conference, when European powers yielded to German dictator Adolf Hitler and allowed him to take over part of Czechoslovakia.

In response, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "the comments made by the prime minister are unacceptable in the president's opinion."

The flap comes a day after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement urged Palestinians to stick to a truce with Israel for the sake of the Palestinian cause.

But that bid was was sent reeling, as five Palestinians were killed and 17 wounded after Israeli tanks, backed by helicopters, entered Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank city of Hebron before dawn, police and hospital sources said.

Witnesses said the five were killed as an Israeli helicopter blasted a house with a missile.

Israeli General Yitzhak Gershom said four or five of the dead had belonged to the armed "Tanzim" wing of Fatah and "were behind the shooting Wednesday, which wounded two Israelis in front of the Cave of the Patriarchs" a site holy to both Muslims and Jews in the West Bank city of Hebron.

In another blow to the sickly truce-consolidation accord, hammered out nine days ago by Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a car of Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Israeli and wounded another on a road near the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem, Israeli settler sources said.

The attack was claimed by both the "Return Brigade" of Fatah, as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, based in Damascus.

The death toll for the year-old Palestinian uprising now stands at 862, including 664 Palestinians and 175 Israelis.

The killing left in doubt the power of the PLO's executive committee, which had called on "all forces and factions to strictly respect the ceasefire to preserve the Palestinian national interest."

The Palestinians were trying to douse the flames of violence that have left some 40 dead and hundreds wounded since the Arafat-Peres meeting.

Fatah and the PLO executive committee had also warmly welcomed Bush's remarks Tuesday in favour of a Palestinian state as "a cornerstone to security, stability and peace in the Middle East."

The praise for Bush came hand in hand with Arafat's renewed condemnation of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said both Israel and the Palestinians needed to calm the current situation to salvage their tattered truce, but placed the onus on the Palestinians.

"I'd say very clearly we think the Palestinian Authority must take immediate, sustained and effective steps to preempt violence, to end shooting attacks and to arrest those who are responsible for planning and conducting acts of violence and terror," Boucher said.

The United States pressured Israel to agree to a ceasefire to allow Washington to bring wary Arab and Muslim states into its coalition against Saudi-born Islamist Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

But a meeting between Peres and leading Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat on Thursday ended after an hour, with no results, the Palestinian side said.

Israel was still reeling Friday from the previous day's twin disasters of a Russian airline exploding in midair with dozens of Israelis aboard and a Palestinian gunman, disguised as a soldier, gunning down three people in the northern town of Afula.

The gunman was identified by family Friday as Nazer Hamad, 27, from al-Araqa, in the northen West Bank.

More than 1,000 gathered at a rally called in his honour in nearby Jenin by the National and Islamic Forces, the coalition of Islamic and secular Palestinian parties.

The local head of Fatah, Qadara Mussa, told the crowd: "The Palestinian people are proud of this hero, this martyr. We will continue our intifada."

The attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah.

Meanwhile, Israel's large Russian-immigrant population was in shock at the explosion and crash into the Black Sea of a charter jet carrying at least 50 Jews who had recently moved to Israel.

The cause of the mid-air blast remained unclear. The plane was bound from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in western Siberia.

Officials in Russia and Israel said earlier they had not ruled out a terrorist attack. No survivors had been found hours after the crash.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001

Answers

Forgot to to article above is via Drudge Reports.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001