End Arafat siege now, Annan tells Israel

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged Israel to stop its assault on Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, saying destroying it will not bring peace.

A resolution introduced by Norway at an emergency UN Security Council session in New York last night demanded an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, home of Arafat’s compound. A council vote was possible today.

Deputy US Ambassador James Cunningham warned Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and his government ‘‘to carefully consider the consequences’’ of attacking Arafat’s headquarters.

Cunningham said Arafat must not be harmed.

‘‘Chairman Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people. His leadership is now, and will be, central to any meaningful effort to restore calm,’’ Cunningham said.

The emergency session, which interrupted a Good Friday holiday, was called at the Palestinians’ request after Israeli troops, backed by tanks, swarmed into Arafat’s headquarters, confining the Palestinian leader.

The meeting concluded a tumultuous week in Middle East politics. Arab League nations endorsed a Saudi peace plan, a suicide bomber killed 22 Passover diners, and Sharon vowed that Israel would ‘‘isolate’’ Arafat with a massive military push.

‘‘The killing of Arafat would be the mother of all mistakes,’’ said Palestinian UN envoy Nasser al-Kidwa, who called the Ramallah assault ‘‘an insane step by Sharon’’.

Saying he was trying to salvage the situation, al-Kidwa called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian cities.

Annan, who flew home yesterday from the Arab summit, said he was ‘‘deeply alarmed at the rapid escalation of the violence’’.

‘‘Israel should halt its assault on the Palestinian Authority,’’ Annan said. ‘‘Destroying the Palestinian Authority will not bring Israel closer to peace.’’

Describing suicide bombings as ‘‘repugnant’’, he said they subverted all peace attempts.

‘‘Terrorism will not bring the Palestinian people closer to an independent Palestinian state,’’ Annan said.

Cunningham urged the Palestinians to co-operate with US Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni ‘‘to put in place immediately a lasting ceasefire and to take the step to bring tangible benefits to both peoples. This is the only solution to the crisis before us’’.

‘‘The cycle of violent action and reaction in the Middle East must stop,’’ he said.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Yehuda Lancry blamed Arafat for the crisis, saying militants found sanctuary in his headquarters.

‘‘Chairman Arafat has made it abundantly clear both through his actions and inactions that the murder of innocent Israeli civilians is legitimate and desirable and that somehow terrorism and dialogue can live side by side,’’ he said.

‘‘The glorification of suicide bombings against innocent civilians, precisely because they are innocent, and the continuing failure to arrest known terrorists who enjoy protection and support in the Palestinian territories and in the presidential compound of Chairman Arafat are but some of the signs that Chairman Arafat has no intention of reaching a peaceful settlement,’’ said Lancry.

Israeli troops, backed by tanks had swarmed into Arafat’s headquarters yesterday, punching holes in walls and fighting room to room as Arafat huddled in a windowless office and made frantic appeals to world leaders by cell phone.

Early today, Israeli tanks also rumbled into a Palestinian town adjoining biblical Bethlehem, where Christians are observing Easter weekend, but did not enter Bethlehem itself, Palestinians said.

Five Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday as Israeli forces took over the West Bank city of Ramallah and Arafat’s sprawling compound, where 25 Palestinians were wounded and 60 detained.

In the latest Palestinian attack, an 18-year-old woman blew herself up at the entrance of a Jerusalem supermarket, killing herself and two Israelis. The Al-Aqsa Brigades, a militia close to Arafat’s Fatah movement, said it sent the bomber.

The Ramallah operation was described by Israeli officials as the first stage of a much larger assault aimed at destroying the ‘‘terrorist infrastructure’’ that Israelis blame for the hundreds of deaths they have suffered in 18 months of relentless violence. More than a thousand Palestinians also have died.

Israel said it had no plans to kill Arafat but wanted to isolate him. But Arafat was dismissive about the assurances of his safety.

‘‘They are shelling us continuously in the last 24 hours,’’ Arafat said in a telephone interview with CNN, during which machine-gun fire could be heard in the background. ‘‘What do you think, it’s by chance?’’

‘‘It is the real terrorism of the occupation. They are using all the American weapons against us.’’

Arafat was in a windowless room, following events on television, giving phone interviews to satellite TV channels and speaking by phone to more than a dozen world leaders.

He pleaded for immediate international intervention, but was given no real promises, one of his aides said.

Among those Arafat spoke with were US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Kofi Annan, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Arab League leader Amr Moussa.

A sub-machine gun placed on the table in front of him, Arafat was defiant. ‘‘They want me under arrest or in exile or dead, but I am telling them, I prefer to be martyred,’’ he said in a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television channel.

In yet another interview, with Jordanian state-run television, Arafat described Sharon as ‘‘bloodthirsty’’ and bent on ‘‘blowing up’’ a collective Arab peace initiative endorsed on Thursday.