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Powell: Bush pondering 'temporary Palestinian state'

President Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says Bush is considering the idea of a temporary Palestinian state.
President Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says Bush is considering the idea of a temporary Palestinian state.  


LONDON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said President Bush is considering a "temporary Palestinian state" as a transitional step toward final-status talks in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, five Palestinians who Israel claims were terrorists on their way to carry out an attack were killed Wednesday in a gun battle with Israeli troops in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Powell made his remarks about the White House proposal in an interview with the London-based Arab language newspaper Al Hayat.

He said the United States would continue to work with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and still plans a ministerial conference on the Middle East for the summer -- despite more pessimistic comments from Bush earlier in the week.

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"I will chair the conference, as I believe. We will hold the meeting or conference, call it what you will, this summer," said Powell. He said participants at the conference would discuss security, diplomacy, economy and humanitarian issues.

Powell said Bush "has not retreated from his goal, which is the setting up of a Palestinian state called Palestine."

Powell, according to the article, said the president would announce Friday his vision on a Middle East Peace "and how to turn this vision into reality."

Sharon to meet with Blair

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was due to meet in London with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday, following his Monday meeting with Bush.

After that meeting, Bush said conditions were not yet right for a conference because no one has confidence "in the emerging Palestinian government."

While Sharon has said Israel does not have a peace partner in Arafat, Powell said Sharon "knows clearly that we do not agree with his position that he ought not to work with President Arafat."

Israel Radio reported Wednesday that Sharon had left two key aides -- his chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, and his military secretary, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky -- in Washington.

The two will try to see that understandings Sharon reached with Bush are not eroded when the president meets with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the report said.

In Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said its troops had encountered a "cell" of seven terrorists who were armed and carrying an explosive device in an apparent plan to attack a convoy or a settlement in the Karni-Nezarim area.

The IDF said the men were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement which has carried out numerous attacks against military targets and civilians in Israel and in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

The IDF said four of the men were killed, two others were injured, and the seventh escaped. One of the wounded men, Israel Radio reported, later died of his wounds.

In Herzliya, Israel, a funeral was held for 15-year-old Hadar Hershkowitz, who was killed Tuesday evening when a suicide bomber set off a blast at a restaurant in the coastal city, about six miles north of Tel Aviv.

Five Israelis injured in the attack remained in the hospital, one in serious condition. The bomber was killed.

Police and rescue workers said the severity of the blast was diminished because one of the explosive devices the bomber was carrying did not explode.



 
 
 
 







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