European leaders pressured Israel Tuesday to lift a crippling months-old siege on the Palestinian territories, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, while easing a blockade on some towns, said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat must first call a halt to the bloodshed, said reports.
"If the economy continues to deteriorate, more people plunge into poverty, the Palestinian administration is undermined, it's going to be more difficult to get back to any political stability, re-launch the (peace) process," EU external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, told a press conference.
The EU delegation, including Patten and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, also raised with Israel its withholding of funds collected by Israel for the Palestinian Authority, said The Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Palestinian officials accuse Israel of keeping back some 400 million dollars in tax revenues and customs duties, funds they say are needed to pay their cash-strapped bureaucracy.
But Sharon told the EU officials that Arafat must first make a public call for an end to the more than five months of violence.
"In order to be able to aid the (Palestinian) population, Arafat must call in his own voice for a halt to the terror, a halt to the incitement, preventative actions against terror and a return to security cooperation," he said, according to a statement from his office, quoted by the Post.
"Giving money to Palestinian forces taking part in terror against Israel is an immoral demand," he said.
"The economic crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority derives from the fact that the Authority chose to activate violence and terror, abandoned negotiations and broke agreements with Israel."
Israel, nonetheless, took minor steps on Tuesday by easing a blockade preventing movement to and from several Palestinians towns in the West Bank.
Sharon had come under fire, even from within his own government, over a tightening of the blockade around Ramallah, considered the capital of the West Bank, after Israel said it had information of a planned terror attack.
But the Palestinians said the easing was purely cosmetic and denounced as "cruel and inhumane" the policy of the hardliner.
Sharon stressed the danger to Israel and stability in the region posed by "Palestinian terror," which he said is being carried out primarily by PA security forces, Arafat's Presidential Guard, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese Hizbollah movement, said the Post.
Sharon reiterated to the European delegation that his policy is to strike aggressively against those who dispatch terrorists or carry out terror acts, while at the same time assisting those segments of the population that are not engaged in terror.
Meanwhile, a source close to Sharon told the paper that Palestinian and Israeli security officials held talks Monday night, but that the effectiveness of these talks will be judged by what happens on the ground - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
