The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, left a meeting with President Bush in Washington yesterday trying to sound upbeat about the desperate state of the Middle East peace process, Peter Hirschberg reports.
His Nobel Peace Prize counterpart, the Palestinian Authority President, sounded gloomier during a visit to South Africa. Mr Yasser Arafat demanded international protection for his people from Israeli aggression.
Mr Peres said he was leaving "with a sense that we can move ahead in the direction of peace to achieve a complete peace", a day after Israeli forces again invaded Palestinian-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip. "And while the situation right now is demanding, it is not the end of this process, it is just the beginning of it. We need not lose hope." Mr Peres also sounded encouraged by what he had heard from Mr Bush: "We see eye to eye on how to handle the peace process." There seemed to be growing tension, however, between the dovish Mr Peres, who intimated in a speech on Wednesday that Mr Arafat was not responsible for the violence, and the hawkish Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon. But Mr Peres released a statement yesterday saying Mr Arafat had to take responsibility for ending the violence.
While the new administration has invited both Mr Sharon and Mr Peres to the White House, it has so far shunned Mr Arafat, a scenario criticised yesterday by Mr Faisal Husseini, of the Palestinian Authority.
Mr Arafat, meanwhile, told a meeting in Pretoria of the NonAligned Movement's committee on Palestine that his people needed international protection, and the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had to end.