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Barak urges Europeans to pressure Arafat for peace

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October 26, 2000 

BERLIN (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak urged Germany to pressure Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat into ending Middle East bloodshed, but German officials said Wednesday that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would not take sides on an upcoming visit to the region.

Barak, in an interview with Stern magazine, appealed to European governments and specifically to Schroeder to use their influence with the Palestinians. Germany is the Palestinians' biggest aid donor.

"It seems that Arafat - at least at the moment - is not ready for peace," Barak was quoted as saying in the weekly's latest edition. Schroeder and other European governments should squeeze Arafat to "end the violence and return to the negotiating table," Barak said.

Schroeder is expected to meet both Barak and Arafat during his five-day Middle East trip starting Saturday, which also takes him to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

But German officials said Schroeder would take an even-handed approach and insisted he was not going as a mediator.

"The violence won't bring either side forward, so we call on both sides to help stop the violence and return to the negotiating table," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said.

Asked about Barak's comments, a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Schroeder would be careful not to take sides in a "diplomatic minefield."

"It's about ending, not evaluating the violence," he said.

German leaders are careful not to strain relations with the Jewish state painstakingly built up after the Holocaust, but it is also a long-standing backer of Palestinian aspirations for their own state.

Schroeder had considered canceling the trip because of the violence but decided to go ahead after regional leaders, the U.S. government and other European Union members backed the trip, the official said.

German officials said Europe is playing an increasingly important supporting role to U.S. efforts to foster a resumption of peace talks, but Schroeder has insisted that Germany "claims no role as a mediator."

"Probably only the Americans can do that, though the European Union could perhaps also play a role," he said on ZDF television last week. Calling off the trip "would have sent the wrong signal."

Barak said in the magazine interview that his government would not attempt to "push the Palestinians into a corner."

"That is why we will neither refuse medical help nor cut telephone links or something similar, even though they are dependent on us," Barak was quoted as saying. But he insisted that Israel needs to protect itself, being "the vanguard of the democratic world in this troubled region."