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New talks planned on Israeli West Bank pullback
Israeli and Palestinian ministers will meet on Monday to resume deadlocked talks over a promised Israeli handover of West Bank cities, officials said on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also renewed a commitment under a U.S.-backed peace plan to remove unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts from occupied land, but suggested he would wait until after a planned Gaza pullout in July.
Talks on the handover of West Bank cities broke down last week over an Israeli demand to maintain a roadblock that Palestinians want dismantled outside the town of Jericho.
Israeli defense ministry officials confirmed that Mofaz would meet Youssef on Monday evening. Separate talks were to be held on freeing Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the Palestinian official said.
Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a ceasefire at a Feb. 8 peace summit, but Israel delayed implementing promises to withdraw from five West Bank cities and free 900 prisoners after a suicide bomb attack two weeks later.
Ministers set no timetable for their removal required by a "road map" peace plan backed by Washington, the U.N., Europe and Russia. A ministerial committee was to examine the report's findings and report back to the cabinet in 90 days.
Sharon told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, making his first visit in more than four years, he would dismantle the outposts.
But he said "this would be difficult to do today because of preparations underway" for a separate plan to remove 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and the northern West Bank this summer.
Israel had announced the Gaza pullout unilaterally last year, but later pledged to negotiate a separate troop withdrawal from some West Bank cities after peace moves began with Abbas.
Annan was due on Monday to meet Abbas, whose election in January to succeed Yasser Arafat has raised hopes for renewed peacemaking after more than four years of conflict.
Abbas, in his first interview with Israeli television since being elected president, pledged he would seek to ensure a safe Israeli withdrawal from Gaza this year.
"We want them to leave in peace ... " Abbas told Israel's state-owned Channel One. |
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![Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (L) and the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan shake hands during their meeting in Jerusalem, March 13, 2005. Israel's cabinet adopted on Sunday a report charting state complicity in the building of dozens of unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank but set no timetable for their removal under a U.S.-backed peace plan. [Reuters]](xin_59030214083721807501.jpg)
![A group of Palestinian workers working in Israel, wait to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez border crossing Sunday March 13, 2005. Israel on Sunday permitted 1,400 more Palestinians to enter Israel, part of a gradual easing of restrictions after last month's Mideast summit. The entry permits were issued to 900 Palestinian merchants and business people from the West Bank and 500 from the Gaza Strip, bringing the total of Palestinians allowed to work in Israel to 9,800. [AP]](xin_420302140839812243442.jpg)
