Palestinians want third phase redeployment outside final status talks

The Palestinian government said it refuses to merge the third stage of Israeli redeployment in the West Bank with the final status issues.

The leadership said in a statement following its meeting today under chairmanship of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that all the signed agreements call for implementing the third stage without relating it to the final status issues.

It also said the second round of negotiations with Israel in Washington had ended without achieving progress due to the Israeli attempts to go beyond international legitimacy resolutions. It added that the Israeli attempts to evade the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council will obstruct reaching an agreement between the two sides, saying that these attempts come to partition the final status issues.