Palestinian President Yasser Arafat will meet US Secretary of State Collin Powell in Europe within the next ten days, said a high-ranking Palestinian official on Wednesday.
The secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, Mahmoud Abbas (better known as Abu Mazen), said after talks with Powell in Washington that Arafat would meet Powell in a European country within the coming ten days, according to Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.
But the official did not specify the country where the two were scheduled to meet.
Abu Mazen, the highest-ranking Palestinian to visit Washington under the Bush administration, held more than one hour of talks with Powell on Tuesday on the escalating situation in the Palestinian territories and how to restart peace talks, said reports.
"It was a good and useful and long discussion," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"It was an extensive discussion of all the current issues in the region, including the violence, economic problems and how to find a way back to negotiations," he said, cited by Reuters.
Abu Mazen also met US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. The meeting was unusually long for Powell, who often gives visiting foreign ministers half an hour of his time, said the agency.
"They had a lot to talk about," Boucher said.
He said the talks also covered Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the Mitchell commission's report on Israeli-Palestinian violence, and Egyptian-Jordanian proposals to bring the fighting to an end.
Asked if there were any breakthroughs, he said: "I'm not claiming one."
Powell has said that the Arab proposals, coupled with the Mitchell report, could form the basis for a new peace initiative.
The commission, set up under US auspices last year, recommended a cease-fire, a freeze in Israeli settlement activity, implementation of past agreements and then the resumption of talks on a permanent settlement.
The Palestinians have welcomed both the Arab proposals and the Mitchell report, but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says freezing settlement activity reward the Palestinians for the last seven months of violence.
Boucher said Powell had now received comments on the Mitchell commission report from the Israelis, the Palestinians and the United Nations.
He declined to say when the United States would comment formally on the report.
According to the agency, unconditional US endorsement of the report could put Washington on a collision course with the Israeli government on the question of settlements, which most governments consider to be a violation of the Geneva conventions.
A senior Palestinian cabinet minister on Sunday ruled out a resumption of negotiations unless there was a halt to all settlement building on land Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
Under Powell, the State Department has said that the settlements are provocative and inflammatory. The previous Clinton administration called them an obstacle to peace.
Earlier on Tuesday, Powell told a Senate subcommittee that reducing the violence was the key to progress.
At least 424 Palestinians have been killed since their uprising began in September. Eighty Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have also been killed.
Powell said: "Once the violence starts moving in the other direction, we've got to see economic activities start up again, principally by allowing Palestinian workers to get to their jobs and releasing tax revenues that belong to Palestinians that are being held by the Israeli government." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
