Middle East mediation
JERUSALEM – The Greek and Turkish foreign ministers, on a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, yesterday focused their efforts on the problem of the three-week siege on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Israeli troops have surrounded about 200 Palestinians. Although Greece’s George Papandreou had stressed that the visit by the ministers of the two traditional rivals was mostly symbolic, the two discussed the Bethlehem crisis with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who remains besieged in his Ramallah headquarters since March 29, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The Foreign Ministry’s general secretary for Greeks abroad, Dimitris Dolis, and Papandreou’s close aide Alex Rondos had been working on the issue for days. The Greek and Turkish ministers persuaded Sharon to allow the Palestinian negotiator to go to Tel Aviv last night to discuss the problem with them. The Jerusalem Patriarchate is keen to see an end to the siege so that one of the holiest sites of Christianity will not be turned into a symbol of war. Papandreou expressed the belief that there will be a positive development in the next few days. In Ramallah, Arafat said that the 1993 peace he signed with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin «has now been canceled and demolished.» He also declared that «without peace in the Holy Land there will be no peace in the Middle East.» Arafat stressed that peace depended on Israel and the United States, which, he said, backed Israel. Israeli tanks are parked as close as 20 meters from Arafat’s living quarters, and the army’s measures and behavior are such that Israeli troops held up Greek and Turkish diplomats for so long as they left Ramallah that they were unable to attend the meeting with Sharon. Papandreou told Arafat of the symbolic nature of the visit and the need to develop a new environment for dialogue. Cem was far more specific, tying the dispatch of international observers to the monitoring also of terrorist networks. The Israelis will accept observers only if they are Americans who will investigate terrorist organizations as well.
