gelatik
24.07.02, 15:11
PARIS, July 24 - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who arrives in Paris
Wednesday, July 24, for talks on the Middle East, said in an interview that
the peace process would not advance without Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian
Authority chief is “the only Palestinian capable of making concessions.”
“The day that negotiations resume, he will be the only one who will dare to
make the necessary concessions (...) the only one who will be able to get the
concessions accepted by the Palestinians,” Mubarak said in an interview with
the French daily newspaper, Le Figaro, published Wednesday.
“Arafat will have to be made to move but, without him, the peace process will
not advance,” said the Egyptian leader, adding: “We need Arafat to boost the
peace process. So he must stay on until the end of the process ... to get rid
of Arafat today would be to unleash chaos.”
However, “If Arafat is the only one to make concessions, the Palestinians
will not forgive him. He needs Israeli concessions.”
The Americans, Mubarak said, “must stop the injustice that consists of loudly
condemning the faults of the Palestinians while closing their eyes to those
of the Israelis.”
The Egyptian president said an international peace conference, backed by
France, could be “the last chance solution” if all else failed, but he warned
that such a conference would take lengthy preparation.
Stressing that opening a “second front” with strikes against Iraq would
only “aggravate the destabilization” of the region.
Mubarak said: “If (U.S. President George W.) Bush insists on eliminating the
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he must eliminate them everywhere else
(...) doesn’t Israel also have a particularly sophisticated arsenal, a
particularly dangerous panoply?”
Mubarak was due to arrive Wednesday in Paris, and to meet Thursday, July 25,
with French President Jacques Chirac.
