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U.S. backing crucial to Saudi plan: Arafat

New York Feb. 28. Describing the Saudi Arabian proposal to bring peace to West Asia as a "very strong platform", the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat has asserted that its chances of success depends on immediate American support.

"There must be a very important, and very strong, and very quick push from outside," Mr. Arafat said in an interview to The New York Times last night at his battered and darkened compound in Ramallah, where Israeli forces have confined him for almost three months. Mr. Arafat's strongest hope seemed to be that the United States would use the Saudi proposal to end 17 months of unrelenting violence, which he suggested now threatens the region's stability, the Times said. "The most important thing is that it is accepted by the Europeans, the Russians and the Americans," Mr. Arafat said. The critical role, he stressed, was that of the U.S. President, George W Bush.

Recalling the efforts by the U.S. President's father, George Bush during his Presidency to convene a West Asia peace conference in Madrid in 1991, Mr. Arafat said he hoped the current President Bush would complete `this very important historical initiative."

But, the Times said, he did not specify how he thought the Americans might help. How quickly the goals of the Saudi plan can be attained "depends no doubt on the Americans," he said.

Mr. Arafat said he expected the proposal would receive full approval at a summit meeting of the members of the Arab League on March 27 in Beirut. Asked if he believed he would live to see a Palestinian State, Mr. Arafat, 72, said, "no doubt, no doubt." When asked about three recent Israeli missile strikes within yards of his office, he said with an indulgent smile said "I am an old general."

Mr. Arafat, the Times said, noted with satisfaction recent signs of Israeli dissent, pointing in particular to a letter signed by more than 250 reserve members of the armed forces refusing to serve in the occupied territories.

But, when asked if he thought the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon's coalition Government would be split by the Saudi proposal, he said: "We hope not. We hope all of them will accept it."

Mr. Arafat, the paper said, pointed out that Mr. Sharon, in his long military and political career, had supported some difficult Israeli concessions for peace, including the withdrawal from Sinai to achieve peace with Egypt. "He (Sharon) demolished by himself all the settlements" in Sinai, Mr. Arafat, said.

"If there's a will, there's a way." "Not to forget," Mr. Arafat said, when it was suggested that the Americans thought he had not done enough to fight violence, "I didn't send my helicopters and my F-15s and my F-16s and my tanks to any Israeli city. But in spite of that, we are completely committed to the peace of the brave, which we have signed. Not only for us, the peace. The peace is for us, the Palestinians; for them, the Israelis; for the whole Middle East."

When asked about Mr. Sharon's recent statement that he regretted Israel's failure to kill Mr. Arafat when it had the chance in Lebanon, the Palestinian leader smiled and said Israel had in fact tried to kill him. "I have to ask him, Does this help?" he said of the comment about his death. "Does it help the peace process?"

"It seems that he (Sharon) doesn't want to forget 1982," Mr. Arafat said. That year, Mr. Sharon, as Defence Minister, led an invasion of Lebanon to drive the Palestine Liberation Organisation away from Israel's northern border.

Israeli forces wound up besieging Mr. Arafat in Beirut, much as they are now doing in Ramallah. Asked about his confinement, Mr. Arafat said, "for me, it's not the first time." More important, he said, were the Israeli restrictions faced by average Palestinians, which he described as "the siege, the reoccupation of liberated Palestinian areas, these checkpoints that you see for yourself."

He warned that new "buffer zones" planned by Mr. Sharon to separate Israelis and Palestinians would turn Palestinian areas into a patchwork of "Bantustans." He said Mr. Sharon was planning a "Berlin Wall" around Jerusalem.

PTI

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