Posted on 06/25/2002 1:02:45 PM PDT by Dallas
RAMALLAH, West Bank, June 25 (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called for reforms in the Palestinian Authority after talks on Tuesday with Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian president's Israeli-encircled office.
"These reforms are absolutely vital. The Palestinian authorities must not be prevented from putting them into effect. They must go hand in hand with a return to a political process that is indispensable," Villepin said.
"They must bring more transparency and more efficiency into the workings of Palestinian institutions and so pave the way for the creation of a Palestinian state," he told reporters in Arafat's battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The French foreign minister was the first Western European official to see Arafat since U.S. President George W. Bush called in a Middle East policy speech on Monday for a new Palestinian leadership as a condition for a Palestinian state.
"It is up to the Palestinians alone freely to choose their leaders," Villepin said, echoing comments by Arafat and noting the Palestinian president planned to hold elections.
Asked for a response to Bush's leadership call, Arafat, who has announced plans for elections by early next year, told reporters: "This is what my people will decide. They are the only ones who can determine this."
Villepin arrived at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah -- one of seven West Bank cities reoccupied by Israel since 26 Israelis were killed in Palestinian suicide bombings last week -- in a convoy escorted by the Israeli military.
Israeli vehicles stopped at the entrance to the compound, which has been largely destroyed in past incursions, and the French foreign minister's convoy proceeded inside.
An Israeli armoured personnel carrier kept watch from about 150 metres (yards) away as Arafat and his visitor stepped into the courtyard after their talks to speak with reporters.
Ah, the French. The first terrorist state in the world, and a never-ending fount of filth.
The IDF should have dropped a shell right in the lap of Arafat and this froggie.
The Europeans are just starting to get a taste of what the costs of their own defense will mean to their sagging economies/welfare states.... that the Left will not rule forever in a climate where books must be balanced and more expenditures made for necesseties such as common defense, free'r trade, etc....
Ah, the French - they just don't like Germans, English or Americans and play one off against the other any chance they get!
President Bush did not say he was going to choose the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinians can elect whomever they want. Nevertheless, President Bush has the power to either support or oppose the creation of a Palestinian state. New leadership is one of his requirements for US support.
President Bush:
"And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state"
Every sensible American hates the French. Our national recognition of French perfidy began the day France denied us permission to overfly their airspace. The French have worked excptionally hard to earn our enmity every day since.
Seriously, I think there is historical basis for the obvious, visceral animus, but I submit it is also current in scope. The French have been skeptical of neo-con foreign adventures and seem to think that French foreign policy should first and foremost favor France. That's a big no-no, if you get my drift.
Sigh. You may not know it, but you already put your flag up. It's not a pretty one.
What did France ever do to Israel other than stand behind Israel in the Suez Canal Affair, and reportedly help Israel acquire the Bomb?
Much water under the bridge since then, no? And much difference between those honourable Frenchmen and the furtive little arsonists that creep around synagogues today, no?
The American flag is my flag, and it is even prettier.
As for the arsonists, they are not Frenchmen, and never will be, and you know that as well as I.
One group of children was hidden for several years, discovered and sent to Auschwitz but didn't make it there. In the early 1990s, some from America went to France for a reunion with the nuns who had saved them.
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