MIDDLE EAST: The US President and the Israeli Prime Minister yesterday urged the Palestinian Prime Minister to confront terrorist groups aggressively, as a precondition for substantive progress toward Palestinian statehood.
Mr Mahmoud Abbas has already made clear he cannot do this, for fear of igniting Palestinian civil war.
"The Palestinian Authority must undertake sustained targeted and effective operations to confront those engaged in terror and to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure," Mr Bush said, adding that the Palestinian aspiration to statehood depended on such action. "There will be no peace if terrorism flourishes."
Mr Abbas had pledged to destroy terror groups, Mr Bush said, "and that is exactly what is going to happen". Mr Ariel Sharon echoed Mr Bush's sentiments. "There can be no compromise with terror and evil," he said.
Referring to the current ceasefire in the intifada, he said Israel feared that "this welcome quiet will be shattered any minute as a result of the continued existence of terror organisations which the Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to eliminate".
Only when there was "a complete cessation of terrorism, incitement and violence" would he be able to take further constructive measures to advance the peace process, Mr Sharon said.
Mr Bush was meeting Mr Sharon at the White House just four days after he hosted and lavished praise upon the Palestinian Prime Minister. Mr Abbas had blamed Israel for exaggerated hesitancy in embracing opportunities for peace and had urged a halt to settlement building and to the construction of Israel's West Bank security barrier - which cuts into the West Bank to encompass some settlements - the release of more Palestinian prisoners and the lifting of the Israeli army siege on the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
Mr Bush on Friday had made plain his empathy for Mr Abbas's emphasis on the suffering of ordinary Palestinians and had specifically described the security barrier as a "wall" which he regarded as a "problem." Mr Sharon yesterday apparently satisfied some of Mr Bush's objections. He brought photographs showing that the barrier was a "wall" only for a minority of its length, where it was designed to prevent Palestinian gunfire at nearby Israeli residential areas and insisting it was solely a security measure.
He pledged to minimise the "infringement on the daily life" of Palestinians it caused and may have offered to delay construction of some particularly problematic sections of the barrier - especially where it is set to run deep into the West Bank to embrace one of the largest settlements, Ariel, south-west of Nablus.
Mr Sharon also appears to have satisfied Mr Bush that he is attempting to meet Mr Abbas half way by announcing the imminent releases of 540 Palestinian prisoners, removing some West Bank road blocks, promising an imminent Israeli withdrawal from two more West Bank cities and planning to remove further illegal settlement "outposts".
Mr Abbas has said he intends to marginalise Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Arafat-loyalist splinter groups which have carried out attacks by proving to their supporters that such violence is both wrong and counter-productive to the Palestinian cause.
Mr Bush wants to ensure that Mr Sharon bolsters Mr Abbas as much as possible - through military withdrawals, easing of travel restrictions and the issuing of more work permits for Palestinians to enter Israel. Mr Bush and Mr Sharon are in complete accord that one way or another, Mr Abbas has to put the bombers out of business.
A senior Israeli military official, in an off-the-record briefing yesterday, predicted that the three-month ceasefire declared by Hamas and most Palestinian groups a month ago, might well continue beyond that period.
However the army's chief of staff, Gen Moshe Ya'alon, said that unless these groups were rendered incapable of further violence, it would be "only a matter of time" until the next wave.