Qureia attacks Blair conference plan

PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia yesterday poured scorn on British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s peace initiative yesterday - throwing into doubt a London conference that Israel has already said it will boycott.

He said that he was disappointed with the plan to hold a conference in March that will focus on reforms in the Palestinian Authority.

Both men held talks in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Wednesday, where Mr Blair proposed holding a one-day conference to promote administrative, economic and security reforms the Palestinians need to make before they can reach a peace deal and have an independent state.

New US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would attend.

“We don’t need to go to a conference so we can be rehabilitated and trained how to negotiate. We are capable of doing all these things,” Mr Qureia told his Cabinet yesterday. He said the Palestinians had hoped for a wider conference that would deal with the issues of a final settlement between the two parties.

“We are in need of an international conference on peace and not a meeting,” Mr Qureia said, adding that Mr Blair’s view that the Palestinians were unprepared for talks was “unacceptable”.

Thousands of Palestinians crammed polling stations in scattered West Bank towns to vote in municipal elections yesterday that were a warm-up for next month’s presidential ballot and the first time the ruling Fatah movement and the Islamic militant group Hamas competed for voter support.

Mr Qureia, who voted in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, praised the election in 26 small West Bank municipalities as “the first step toward the establishment of the Palestinian state”.

The late Yasser Arafat had been reluctant to allow municipal elections, fearing that Hamas, the largest opposition group, would make a strong showing.

Hamas has grown in popularity during the more than four years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, providing social services with its schools and clinics.

Meanwhile, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired 20 mortar shells at Jewish settlements, injuring an Israeli man.

Most of the shells were fired from the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, a day after the Israeli military raided the camp to stop the firing.

Later, two people were killed in an explosion in a house in Khan Younis. Palestinians said the blast was caused by a tank shell.

Witnesses said the explosion occurred in the middle of the house, which belonged to a Hamas activist, leading to speculation militants inside may have accidentally detonated explosives they were preparing.