Arafat missed chance for peace, says Clinton

FORMER US President Bill Clinton offered condolences to Palestinians after the death of Yasser Arafat but said their leader had missed the opportunity to create lasting Middle East peace in 2000.

Mr Clinton, who helped broker a Middle East peace plan with Mr Arafat and Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, will not attend his memorial service or his funeral.

Mr Clinton, Mr Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Mr Rabin made history on September 13, 1993, when the three men shook hands on the White House lawn and signed interim peace accords that led to seven years of negotiation and relative peace.

But he said in a statement: “I regret that in 2000 he missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realised in a just and lasting peace.”

Attempts to steer Mr Arafat and the Israelis to a Middle East peace agreement dominated much of Mr Clinton’s last year in office in 2000 but the talks finally broke down, with the White House putting much of the blame on Mr Arafat.

Mr Arafat, however, insisted the deal he was offered by then Israeli PM Ehud Barak was less generous than implied and would have required him to abandon the Palestinian claim to part of Jerusalem.

“However others viewed him, the Palestinians saw him as the father of their nation,” said Mr Clinton.

Former US President Jimmy Carter called Mr Arafat “the father of the modern Palestinian nationalist movement” and “a powerful human symbol and forceful advocate”.

“While he provided indispensable leadership to a revolutionary movement and was instrumental in forging a peace agreement with Israel in 1993, he was excluded from the negotiating role in more recent years,” Mr Carter said in a statement issued by his office.