THE MIDDLE EAST: In a rare flowering of Middle East dialogue and purported moderation, Mr Ariel Sharon has held his first meeting with top Palestinian leaders since becoming prime minister a year ago, and the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat has published a call for reconciliation and coexistence.
Acting at least partly to further boost his support in Washington ahead of his talks with President Bush there on Thursday, Mr Sharon demonstrated his readiness for dialogue by hosting Mr Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian parliamentary speaker; Mr Mohammed Abbas, Mr Arafat's deputy; and Mr Mohammed Rashid, a key Arafat financial adviser, for a three-hour meeting at his Jerusalem residence last week.
The talks were not particularly productive: Mr Sharon demanded, as ever, that the Palestinian Authority smash terrorist groups and stop inciting violence against Israel; the Palestinians urged Israel to stop killing off alleged intifada orchestrators and halt its military incursions into their territory. But the talks were significant merely in that they took place, and Mr Sharon said last night a second session had been scheduled for after his return from the US.
Also bent on boosting support in Washington, where he is increasingly discredited, Mr Arafat published an op-ed article in yesterday's New York Times setting out what he called "The Palestinian Vision of Peace". Insisting that, under his leadership , the Palestinians were "ready to end to the conflict" with Israel, Mr Arafat pledged to halt the activities of "terrorist groups" which attack Israeli civilians. Unprecedentedly, if vaguely, he also declared that he was prepared to "take account" of Israel's "demographic concerns" in any future effort to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue. (Israel says that at the July 2000 Camp David summit, MrArafat's insistence on a "right of return" to sovereign Israel for potentially four million Palestinian refugees torpedoed the summit.)
Palestinian officials said the article was designed to correct the impression that has gained ground in the United States that Mr Arafat is not a viable peace partner for Israel - an impression Mr Sharon firmly endorses.
But if Israel's dismissal of the op-ed article as "mere words" was entirely predictable, it was telling that Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, was also conspicuously underwhelmed. Mr Arafat needed to take action to deal with "the terrorists in his midst", she said. "He knows that there are Hamas and Hizbullah elements around him. He knows that Karine A affair - the shipment of arms apparently purchased from Iran and shipped through Hizbullah (and intercepted by Israel last month) - is a violation of the Oslo accords."
Mr Sharon said last night Mr Arafat's article "didn't persuade me" of any genuine shift in policy, "and I propose no one else be persuaded." He said his meeting with Mr Arafat's aides did not signify any new readiness on his part to resume negotiations with Mr Arafat, who had "made himself irrelevant."
After a weekend of relatively few violent incidents, there were reports last night of a clash between Palestinian militants and policemen in Gaza's Shati refugee camp, with six policemen and two civilians wounded.