The United States has reacted to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's imposition of house arrest on the spiritual leader of Hamas, by saying similar steps had been taken before with and then "faded away."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that Arafat had to prove his commitment to ending anti-Israel attacks by making sustained efforts toward preventing them. "In and of itself it doesn't mark that much progress," he told reporters when asked about the house arrest of Sheikh Yassin.
"It needs to be part of an overall effort to get at the infrastructure of violence and that needs to be serious and sustained," Boucher said. "In this particular case we've seen house arrests before, which over not too long a period of time were relaxed and sort of faded away," he said.
"We think there need to be serious and sustained actions against the terrorists and their infrastructure and the groups that perpetrate terrorism." (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
