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Palestinians accuse Israel of provoking serious crisis

RAMALLAH: Israel has provoked a "serious crisis" in the peace process, said an official statement issued on Friday after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership chaired by Yasser Arafat.

"The Israeli government has ignored all the agreements that have been reached and emptied the negotiations of their sense, provoking a serious crisis which could lead the peace process as a whole to the edge of the abyss," said the statement, carried by the official WAFA news agency.

It called for the international community in general, and the United States, as co-sponsor of the peace process in particular, to "act immediately to save the process from imminent collapse."

The Palestinian leadership warned in no uncertain terms of a "return to unrest and turbulence in the Middle East" if the peace process continues to be blocked.

The statement strongly condemned the continuation of settlement building, describing the policy of the current government of Labour Party, Prime Minister Ehud Barak as "worse" than that of its right wing predecessor.

"The Barak government has built more settlements and confiscated much more land, in particular in east Jerusalem and around the autonomous West Bank town of Bethlehem," than the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose settlement policies aimed to destroy the peace process, the statement said.

"Despite all our meetings, the Barak government has not given up one iota of its policy of building settlements" on Palestinian territory, the statement said.

The statement reaffirmed that "peace is in the interest of both sides, both peoples, and the whole of the region."

The statement was issued after the regular Friday meeting attended by members of the government and of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

It came a day after a summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Barak, designed to give aboost to the faltering negotiations aimed at reaching final settlement between them, broke up in disagreement.

Israel and the Palestinians had set a target date of February 13, to reach a framework agreement on all the issues dividing them, but both sides have expressed pessimism that the target will be met.

The delay has also put a question mark over the feasibility of reaching a final peace agreement by September 13, as scheduled.

Barak publicly admitted on Thursday that there were serious tensions with the Palestinians after the breakdown of his meeting with Arafat.

He said, differences surrounded the map of an Israeli withdrawal from 6.1 percent of the West Bank which was due to have taken place on January 20, and on the issue of a subsequent withdrawal, demanded by the autonomy agreements. AFP