MIDDLE EAST: World leaders yesterday praised President Bush's speech supporting a Palestinian state but told him that the fate of Mr Yasser Arafat will be decided by the Palestinians themselves despite his call for a new leadership "not compromised by terror".
The EU pointedly called for an international conference on the Middle East, a measure conspicuously absent from Mr Bush's long-awaited speech on Middle East peace.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, welcomed Mr Bush's assertion that the peace process should lead to the creation of Palestine but avoided commenting on Mr Bush's call to replace Mr Arafat.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, stressed it was for the Palestinian people to choose their leader. "The Palestinian people will alone decide who is their legitimate leader," Mr Fischer said in Berlin.
Russia said it supported the policy speech but that some points needed to be clarified. A foreign ministry spokesman said that Mr Bush had not made any "concrete or direct mention" that Mr Arafat should go, a day after President Putin warned that sidelining Mr Arafat would be "dangerous and a mistake".
"I welcome the US engagement, spelled out in President Bush's speech, in efforts to overcome the crisis in the Middle East," the EU Foreign Policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, said in Brussels.
Mr Solana said an international conference which had been discussed in previous diplomatic efforts was "more than ever necessary". He did not refer to Mr Arafat by name, but Mr Solana noted that the EU was prepared to help Palestinians organise elections "giving them an opportunity to choose their leaders."
The Swedish Foreign Minister, Ms Anna Lindh, said Mr Bush's call to the Palestinians to let Mr Arafat go was unacceptable. Japan, too, gave a qualified welcome to the Bush initiative. - (AFP)