Israel Says It Has No Plan Kill Arafat
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom Monday dismissed comments by a cabinet minister that Israel could kill Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, but the remarks served to increase international pressure for caution.
Vice premier and Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday "killing (Arafat) is definitely one of the options" also including exile or isolating him in his compound.
The words, following an Israeli decision in principle to expel Arafat from the West Bank, drew anger in the Arab world and blank incredulity in Europe.
"Assassination is an extremely dangerous thing," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told reporters during a visit to France.
"If the Israelis assassinate Yasser Arafat and if everyone assassinates their adversary, then the world would be in total chaos," he said, through a translator.
The European Union also counsels caution in the handling of Arafat, who denies accusations that he has fomented violence.
"We do not expect it (assassination)," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters in Brussels.
"It does not go through our imagination that that can take place," Solana said. "I do not believe that anything of that nature is going to take place."
He stressed he had neither sought nor received guarantees that Arafat, confined to his ruined West Bank headquarters in Ramallah for more than a year, would not be assassinated.
The Quartet of diplomatic patrons of an Israeli-Palestinian peace "road map" -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- would meet in New York next week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session.
Arafat has denied orchestrating violence in a three-year-old Palestinian militant revolt against Israel for independence.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom, responding to Olmert's comments, told foreign journalists at a briefing:
"There will be no immediate action. It's not official policy of the Israeli government...We don't speak about killing (him). We didn't speak about it before, and we don't speak about it today."
RAGE THOUGH THE ARAB WORLD?
The United States has voiced opposition to any attempt to kill or expel Arafat, moves that Secretary of State Colin Powell said would spread "rage throughout the Arab world."
Israel threatened to dispose of Arafat after a recent surge in bloodshed -- including back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel that killed 15 people last week -- that has shredded a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map."
Tens of thousands of Palestinians, some of them firing assault weapons in the air, have demonstrated on his behalf. Many flocked to his half-demolished compound and vowed to keep 24-hour vigil to ward off any Israeli attempt to snatch him.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Arafat, said a number of Arab heads of state had called Arafat to express solidarity with him and the Arab League was to meet shortly to weigh how to counter Israeli threats against him.
In Tafuh near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, around 2,000 Palestinian children demonstrated in support of Arafat, witnesses said.