Middle East peace moves step closer
Bush met the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas to set the stage for today's crucial three-way summit with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership.
"We seek true peace, not just a pause between more wars and intefadehs, but a permanent reconciliation among the peoples of the Middle East," Mr. Bush said, making his first major foray into Mideast peacemaking.
He made it clear both sides must make concessions to build a lasting peace and warned that terrorism threatened not only the United States and Israel but also the emergence of a Palestinian state.
"Terror must be opposed and it must be defeated," he said. "We must not allow a few people, a few killers, a few terrorists, to destroy the dreams and hopes of the many."
"We shall continue to work for a Middle East that is free of strife and violence, living in harmony without the threat of terrorism or dangers of weapons of mass destruction," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on behalf of the other Arab leaders gathered in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
The Arab leaders rejected terrorism "in any form or shape," he added.
Bush is to meet Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas today in the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
Top of the agenda is the US-backed road map to peace, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005. Abbas is expected to recognise Israel's right to exist in his post-summit declaration.
An Israeli official said Sharon would accept the existence of a Palestinian state.
A key first stage of the road map is for Abbas to rein in the militant groups behind scores of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and troops.
"We support the determination of the Palestinian Authority to fulfil its responsibilities to end violence and to restore law and order," Mubarak said as Abbas looked on.
But he added: "Israel must fulfil its own responsibilities to rebuild trust and restore normal Palestinian life."
Meanwhile, Israel released scores of Palestinian prisoners yesterday, including the oldest and longest-serving inmate, in a goodwill gesture ahead of today's summit. But disagreements remained on the fate of about 100 Israeli settlement outposts set up in the West Bank during the past several years.
Ahmad Jubarah, 68, was released from the Ashkelon prison in southern Israel after serving nearly three decades for his role in a 1975 Jerusalem bomb attack that killed 13 people, the Israel prisons service announced.
He met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah before being reunited with his family in his native village of Tormus Aya, also in the West Bank.
Israel also released about 100 prisoners yesterday being held without charges or trial from the Ketziot, Ofer and Megiddo military prisons, the army said. Tayseer Khaled, a hardline PLO official arrested in February, was freed late on Monday.
Jubarah's release was not without controversy. To Israelis, Jubarah is a killer, and relatives of the attack's victims objected to his freedom. In the attack, a refrigerator was stuffed with explosives and left near Jerusalem's downtown Zion Square. Seventy people were wounded.
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