Palestinians look to US to break ME deadlock

Palestinian boys shout slogans while holding posters of imprisoned Ahmed Saadat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with Arabic writing that reads "No for Political Detention" during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on Monday in Gaza city. Photo: AFP

Talks between Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon broke up Sunday without any commitment from Israel to release more Palestinian prisoners from its jails while demands for troop withdrawals from the West Bank were also shelved.

Abbas arrived Monday in Egypt, where he was expected to hold afternoon talks with President Hosni Mubarak. His Cairo visit was the first leg in a round of meetings which will also take him to Jordan before arriving in Washington for talks with US President George W. Bush on Friday.

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Ahmed Qorei, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, said that the White House would be urged to intervene and prevent the peace process outlined in the US-backed plan known as the roadmap from crumbling.

"Israel has tried to attach conditions that we find unacceptable and we will see what the Americans have to say about that," said Qorei, who will accompany Abbas to Washington.

Palestinian information minister Nabil Amr for his part told AFP that the Palestinians would ask Bush to make a clear statement "demanding that the building of the separation fence and settlement activity be halted, and that the siege on president Arafat be lifted".

Palestinian analyst Ali Jerbawi predicted the US visit, Abbas' first to Washington, would be crunch time for the blueprint.

"Either the roadmap will be implemented or it won't... If the US does not push Israel, we are heading back to the vicious circle of negotiations which led to this situation," he said.

The United States is one of the co-sponsors, along with the United Nations, European Union and Russia, of the roadmap, which aims to create an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

The issue of Palestinian prisoners has proved to be the main stumbling block between the two sides, with Israel so far approving the release of just 350 of an estimated 6,000 detainees.

The Palestinians had been hoping that Sharon would give more ground on the issue at his meeting with Abbas in a bid to bolster the latter's position in the face of Palestinian critics.

But instead the two sides merely agreed to form a joint committee to discuss the issue, featuring Palestinian prisoners affairs minister Hisham Abdelrazeq and Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's Shin Beth security service.

Abdelrazeq said that Israel must accept input from the Palestinians over the names and numbers of releases and not try to dictate terms.

"If this is the intention of the Israeli government, a meeting on this subject would not make any sense," the minister told Israeli public radio.