THE MIDDLE EAST: Responding to internal and external demands for reform of his Palestinian Authority, Mr Yasser Arafat spoke yesterday of imminent elections, promised a "review" of the authority and its security forces, and expressed opposition to suicide bombings.
But though lavish in generalities his 40-minute televised address - delivered to the elected Palestinian Legislative Council, whose laws he has frequently failed to sign and whose deliberations he has generally ignored - was short on specifics. He specified no date for the promised elections, nor even whether seats on the council or his own office as president would be at stake.
He gave no firm indication of an intention to streamline his multitude of security apparatuses into one effective force, as Israel, the United States, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have urged. And he detailed no precise proposals to root out corruption in the PA or, most crucially, to relinquish any of his own authority.
In remarks that coincided with "Nakba day" - the date on which Palestinians mark the "catastrophe" represented by the establishment of Israel in 1948 - Mr Arafat said he took "all the responsibility" for "mistakes" that had prompted internal criticism.
In particular, he was referring to the jailing of six men wanted by Israel in Jericho and the deporting of 13 more, in accords that put an end to Israel's siege of his own Ramallah headquarters and of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem earlier this month.
But it was Israel, with its "aggression" and "massacres", he said, that had "tried to abolish the peace deals" and bore the blame for the collapse of the peace process and for the Palestinians' plight. "Matters have been going in the wrong direction as a result of the Israeli government's attitude," he declared.
While he said remained "strategically" committed to the peace process, he also tellingly twice described that commitment in the context of the 12th-century Hudaibiya accord between the Prophet Muhammad and the Arabian tribe of Koreish - an accord abrogated by Islamic forces once they felt strong enough to achieve victory.
The Palestinian leader also spoke out against suicide bombings, stating that "Palestinian and Arabic public opinion have reached a point where they agree such operations do not serve our goals". Quite the reverse, they provoked "the hatred within the international community which was behind the creation of Israel".
Whatever impact Mr Arafat's speech may have on his own public, it made little impression on Israeli leaders. Not only is the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, ruling out peace negotiations until "another authority" represents the Palestinians, but leaders of the more moderate, junior coalition partner, Labour, which launched the Oslo peace process with Mr Arafat in 1993, lined up yesterday at a party conference to depict the Palestinian leader as an unreformable terrorist with whom it was impossible to reach a stable accommodation.
Labour's leader, Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, indeed, set out a vision of peace that was unexpectedly far-reaching, but made clear he saw no prospect of its realisation so long as Mr Arafat was leading his people.
Mr Ben-Eliezer spoke not only about a Palestinian state being established "on most of the territory" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the dismantling of many settlements, but also of the division of Jerusalem into Israeli and Palestinian areas and, unprecedentedly, a relinquishing of Israeli claims to full sovereignty in the Old City, with a "special regime" that would administer the Temple Mount and "recognise the unique connection" of both peoples to this most contested of areas.
He was immediately criticised by his predecessor, Mr Ehud Barak, and by rivals, for offering concessions on Jerusalem.