Arafat: No decision on delay of Palestinian state until leadership meeting
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said on Thursday that he will not take a final decision concerning the declaration of the Palestinian state which was supposed to have been May 4 until a plenary meeting of the Palestinian leadership is held.
Following his meeting with the Egyptian president at Sharm el-Sheikh resort on the Red Sea, Arafat added that the question of declaring the Palestinian state is still under discussion with "the friends of the Palestinian people and their brothers in the world."
He added that he will not take a final decision in this respect until after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership on the level of the central council and the executive committee of the PLO, as well as the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Cabinet of the Palestinian Authority on May 4, the date of the end of the provisional period as stated in the Oslo agreement.
When Arafat was asked about the difference between the forthcoming Palestinian state and his previous declaration of the Palestinian state in Algeria in 1988, he answered that Algeria's declaration was an official one while the forthcoming declaration will be made while the Palestinian leadership is on the Palestinian territories.
Meanwhile, the advisor of the Egyptian president for political affairs, Osama El-Baz, denied that Egypt had exerted any sort of pressure on Arafat to postpone the declaration of the Palestinian state. He asserted that this matter "is left for the Palestinian people and its leadership."
He added that during the meeting Arafat briefed President Mubarak on the results of his European tour and his meeting with US President Bill Clinton in Washington on March 23.
El-Baz added that Arafat expressed to the Egyptian president some "optimism" over the stances advocated by the European leaders he met and that he praised the statement of the European Union issued following Berlin summit, which stressed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
El-Baz also denied that the US administration has used threats in asking Arafat to postpone declaration of the Palestinian state, noting that "so far the US stand has not been officially crystallized."