Egypt rejects demand by US for Arafat's removal

EGYPT: Egypt yesterday distanced itself from the US call for removal of the Palestinian leadership and urged the international community to focus on relaunching negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

After the Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, met separately with a senior Palestinian envoy, Dr Saeb Erekat, and a US Senate delegation, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmad Maher, said that Cairo "strongly supports the democratically-elected Palestinian leadership and rejects any attempt to outflank it".

Mr Maher stated: "We have told all [concerned parties] that we support the will of the Palestinian people as it was expressed in the 1996 elections, in which Arafat was freely and democratically elected president."

Mr Maher's unequivocal assertion contradicts a statement made on Friday by the the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, that the need for the removal of Mr Arafat was "universally recognised" by Arab and other leaders.

On Saturday, Mr Maher rejected reports that Egypt had joined Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest allies in the region, in a campaign to remove Mr Arafat. "We do not play such a game and any such talk is baseless," Mr Maher said. "Who chooses the leadership of the Palestinian people is not Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel or America, but the Palestinian people."

Jordan's King Abdullah adopted a similar line. "The future of President Arafat can only be decided by the Palestinian people and nobody can take a decision on behalf of this people . . . When the Palestinian people decide what they want . . . we have to respect their opinion and support them."

Saudi Arabia's head of intelligence, Prince Nawaf, was quoted in a Saudi-owned, London-based Arabic newspaper as saying that the demand for Mr Arafat's removal by President Bush was "illegitimate". A close associate of Crown Prince Abdullah, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, Prince Nawaf asked: "Do the Americans accept to be told whom they should elect and who should be their president?"

He also criticised Mr Bush for launching his own plan for breaking the Palestinian-Israel deadlock in competition with the Saudi proposal adopted by the Arab summit in March. Mr Bush initially supported that plan.

The prince asked why the US should "take a step back" after it had originally welcomed the Saudi plan as a "valid and comprehensive \ project". He added: "I wonder why the US wants to take such a long shot when we have a readymade initiative that has all the elements of success."

The Saudi plan offered Israel full and normal relations with all Arab states in return for withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967.

Although all three countries welcomed Mr Bush's call for the creation of a Palestinian state, they insist that the borders of this state should follow the ceasefire line of June 4th 1967 and say that all issues should be resolved within a fixed and early time-frame.