Talks to resume. Israel warns against MENA expectations
Israel has decided not to implement any of its further troop redeployment phases in the West Bank and therefore, no territory is to be handed over to the Palestine National Authority in the near future, Israeli sources said Friday.
The US Administration, meanwhile, will try next week to make a last minute effort to bring about an agreement between Palestine and Israel before the opening of the Doha International Economic Conference in Qatar later this month. US sources announced that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet next week in London with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain. Palestinian sources, on the other hand, said that Albright is also due to meet with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Geneva either on November 14 or 15. The US, Palestinian sources in Ramallah said, was very keen on achieving any breakthrough, even a cosmetic one, in order for her envoys to the Arab world to succeed in bringing more countries to the Mena economic conference in Qatar.
So far, at least seven Arab countries have said they won't attend the Doha conference. Palestine officially said it would only make up her mind just a day or two before the conference is convened but Palestinian businessmen said they would boycott the conference. Ibrahim Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian Businessmen Union in the West Bank, said that should Palestinian businessmen attend the conference, they will only have to tell the truth about the situation in the West Bank and this truth, he said, might deter foreign investors from pouring their fortunes into the Palestinian territories. Abdul Hadi blamed the Israeli measures for the ailing economic situation in the Palestinian territories and said that such measures would make it extremely difficult for proper investment to succeed.
The negotiating teams of both Palestine and Israel are due to resume their meetings on Sunday in the region after last week's negotiations in Washington led nowhere, Palestinian sources said. The sources denied Israeli allegations that the Palestinian delegation had deliberately led to the failure of the talks. Israel claimed it was on the verge of reaching an agreement on the airport issue in Gaza and the Gaza industrial zone. Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said at the end of the Washington talks that papers were drawn up and agreements were made with the Palestinians on a number of issues.
Israeli diplomatic sources Friday accused the Palestinians of preventing any real progress from being made in the Washington talks in order to block Israel from achieving diplomatic objectives in advance of the economic conference in Qatar. But Palestinian official sources refuted Levy's claims and said the Washington talks had from the beginning been designed with a major agenda of discussing Israel's failure to redeploy its troops in the West Bank and to stop construction works in all Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.
Meanwhile, Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Natan Sharansky said that Israel has no reason to have high expectations for next week’s regional economic conference in Qatar "although maybe we have to do all that is possible to make the conference a success.” Sharansky was speaking at a planning meeting for the group attending the conference. During the meeting, the president of the Manufacturer’s Association, Dan Propper, said that the goal of the industry representatives from Israel "is to leave Qatar with strong business connections that could become real business, joint ventures and investments in the future."
According to Propper, the delegation being sent to the conference will emphasize joint ventures with companies from the Gulf states. Mark Sofer, head of the Middle East department in the Foreign Ministry, said during the meeting that the Qatar government is prepared for 2,100 participants -- 900 of whom will be business people from various countries, including the Arab states. According to him, the topic of the conference will be economic cooperation between the business and the public arenas. Richard Ross, a representative of the US Ambassador in Israel who spoke in the meeting, said the US is sure that the Qatar economic conference will be a success. He said the US delegation to the conference will include representatives from the largest companies in the US.