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Change Your Life! |
Chinese president meets with Yasser Arafat |
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April 16, 2000
BETHLEHEM, APR 15 (AP) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the Palestinian lands Saturday, amid hopes by Palestinians that China will seek a say in the U.S.-mediated talks on the terms of their independence.
Jiang's limousine drove into the courtyard of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's presidential palace in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem, Jesus' traditional birthplace.
With an honor guard playing the national anthems, Jiang shook hands with Arafat and his Cabinet ministers.
Each visit by a head of state is an important diplomatic achievement for Arafat who expects to declare statehood this year. Negotiations with Israel on the terms of statehood are to conclude by September, although it is not clear whether the target can be met.
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a greater U.S. involvement in the negotiations to try to meet a May deadline for a peace treaty framework. In the past, Israel has preferred to keep outside intervention to a minimum, while the Palestinians have consistently appealed to the international community to step into the negotiations.
Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said the Palestinians would also urge China to seek a role in the negotiations.
"The Chinese people have supported the Palestinian revolution since the 1960s, longer than they have had relations with Israel," Shaath said.
During their meeting Saturday, Jiang and Arafat were to sign an economic cooperation agreement. China has also pledged dlrs 4 million to help build a hospital in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. Later in the day, Jiang was to tour the Church of the Nativity, built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born. He was also expected to address the Palestinian legislative council. Jiang arrived in the Mideast on Wednesday and spent his first three days in Israel, holding talks with Barak, touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and visiting communal desert farms in southern Israel to learn more about growing crops with salty water.
The visit has been overshadowed by Israel's planned sale of a dlrs 250 million spy plane to China, a deal the United States has tried to block, so far to no avail. Israel has said it is committed by contract to selling at least one plane equipped with the PHALCON airborne surveillance system to China.
On Friday, while visiting Kibbutz Ein Gedi, a desert communal farm of 700 residents overlooking the Dead Sea, Jiang politely brushed off reporters' questions about the plane.
Washington has said the sale could upset the military balance of power in Asia, at a time when tensions are rising between China and Taiwan.
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said Israel was committed by contract to selling at least one plane equipped with the PHALCON airborne radar system to China.
"This is an obligation we cannot violate," Sneh told The Associated Press.
The minister said the contract allows for the delivery of three to seven additional planes, but that he understood this was only an option for both sides.
Asked whether Israel has considered not selling the additional planes, Sneh said: "We consider very sincerely and seriously the concerns which we hear now from our friends, and good and true friends in the United States, and we would consider it."
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