Jerusalem, Nov 14: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qurei will seek at their first meeting next week to define the parameters for renewed diplomatic negotiations. Unlike his predecessor Mahmoud Abbas, whose efforts to reach an intra-Palestinian truce were undermined by Sharon's lack of cooperation, Qurei sees the American-brokered road map as the highway to a negotiated settlement of the dispute.

"We want a meeting which produces results," Qurei said in Ramallah yesterday. Later, he told US Secretary of State Colin Powell that he hoped the meeting would succeed in relaunching efforts to implement the roadmap." Israelis and Palestinians must implement "clearly-defined interlocking measures to re-establish regional security which simultaneously ends Palestinian terror and rolls away the Israeli occupation," said Gershon Baskin, a Palestinian analyst at the Palestine-Israel Centre of Research and Information (IPCRI).

According to the road map, the Palestinian Authority undertakes "unequivocal steps to end the violence and terrorism, to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups planning violent attacks against Israelis". On their part, Israel refrains from "actions undermining trust, deportations, attacks on civilians, punitive confiscation and demolition of Palestinian homes and property, and settlement construction."

Bureau Report