Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: PA slams Barak absence at talks with U.S. road map envoy

PA slams Barak absence at talks with U.S. road map envoy  
 
By News Agencies  
 
 
Defense Minister Ehud Barak drew fire Friday from the Palestinian
Authority for failing to attend the first trilateral meeting with a U.S.
envoy to discuss the implementation of the long dormant road map for
Middle East peace. 
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad attended the meeting in a
Jerusalem hotel with General William Fraser, who was appointed by U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to oversee the road map's
implementation. 
Barak sent in his place a senior ministry strategist, Amos Gilad, whose
portfolio covers many of the issues Fraser was expected to raise. 
 
The Palestinians' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, criticized Barak's
decision not to attend, saying he should have been there as a gesture of
respect. 
"It would have been very appropriate for Barak to go," Erekat said. "Maybe
Barak couldn't go because he is busy planning more [settlement
construction] and more incursions." 
Gilad, however, defended the decision. "The stress is on practical talks
.. with the aim of moving forward the peace process," he said before the
two-hour session. "All rumors about tensions are baseless." 
Peace talks launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November
have been bogged down by tensions over building within settlements in the
West Bank and an upsurge in violence between the two sides. 
Israel was bracing for strong U.S. criticism for not living up to its
commitments under the road map. It announced plans earlier this week to
push forward with building hundreds of new homes in a settlement north of
Jerusalem. 
Friday's meet was expected to cover implementation of the first stage of
the road map plan, which calls on Israel to remove outposts built without
government authorization in the West Bank and to halt all settlement
activity in the territory. The 2003 plan also demands that the
Palestinians crack down on militants. 
The peace talks were suspended earlier this month by Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas over an Israel Defense Forces offensive in the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in which more than 120 Palestinians, many of
them civilians, were killed. 
Israel said it was targeting militants behind cross-border rocket attacks
from Gaza, which Hamas seized in June after routing Abbas's more secular
Fatah forces. 
Western diplomats said the peace talks would formally resume next week. 
Friday's closed-door meeting with Fraser was the first since the Annapolis
conference relaunched peace talks with the goal of trying to reach a
statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office
next January. 
Fraser has submitted his first confidential report on road map
implementation to Rice. The contents have been kept secret. 
U.S. officials said ahead of Friday's meeting that Washington was not
satisfied with the pace at which Israel was moving to implement the road
map. 
"The United States considers the expansion of settlement activity to be
not consistent with Israeli obligations under the road map and we have
made that very clear. I have also said that it is certainly not helpful
for the peace process," Rice told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday. 
Israel has likewise failed to uproot the unauthorized outposts in the West
Bank. 
U.S. officials said Washington believed the Palestinians needed to do more
to meet their own obligations to boost security and rein in militants in
the West Bank, though U.S. officials have privately complained to Israel
that its frequent raids were undermining those efforts. 
 
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 Defense Minister Ehud Barak
gente maligna dice che tutti coloro che fanno parte del governo di
ominodigomma sarebbero pronti a trattare per la pace, solo che nessuno
lo farà per non dare il merito a ominodigomma medesimo. E quindi Barak
mette i bastoni tra le ruote per squallidi motivi di politica interna,
tipo essere lui il PM quando si concluderà la pace. Che miseria.