A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WORLD
THURSDAY, AUG. 23, 2001
Violence continues in Gaza
Truce talks planned for Berlin must be 'well prepared'
The Associated Press
NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli commandos yesterday opened fire on Palestinians they said were involved in planting a bomb, killing five people. Palestinian officials said three of the dead were unarmed villagers.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at two cars, killing one person, witnesses said. Palestinian security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the dead man was Eilal Al-Ghoul, 26, a member of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, after the nighttime shooting by the commandos, five bodies were lined up at a Palestinian hospital before a funeral procession. During the procession, a
bullet fired in the air by a marcher critically wounded another man in the head. He was in intensive care at a Nablus hospital.
Israel fired two surface-to-surface missiles at a Palestinian police station in the Gaza village of Karara, and seven policemen were injured by debris. The army said the missiles were fired in response to a Palestinian mortar attack.
Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Psagot near Ramallah in the West Bank and soldiers returned the fire, the Israeli military said. Palestinians said an Israeli tank crossed a few yards into Palestinian territory and fired shells at houses. No injuries were reported.
In Jerusalem, visiting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that Mideast truce talks, tentatively set for Berlin, must be well-prepared, and that he was in touch with the United States, Russia and the European Union on the issue.
The talks would be held between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Peres, who is visiting Poland, confirmed yesterday that he plans to hold renewed trucetalks, but declined to say when or where they would take place.
Over the past two days, Fischer has been shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to help arrange talks. Peres has proposed a gradual truce, to be implemented first in relatively quiet areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, shots were fired at an Israeli truck near the West Bank town of Jenin, and two Israelis were lightly wounded, the army said.
Fischer told Israeli Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg in a meeting yesterday that "the only thing that can stop this crazy cycle of bloodshed . . . is a total freeze of (Israeli) settlements and a total freeze of violence."
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — If the United States and Russia fail to reach an agreement on missile defense, Washington will use its right to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in an interview to a Russian radio station.
In a Russian translation of the interview posted on the station's Web site, Bolton said that the United States would prefer to come to a joint decision with Russia and that he hoped progress would be made before the leaders of the two countries meet in November. The interview was conducted Tuesday and was to be broadcast yesterday evening.
U.S. may quit treaty, official says
Russia is opposed to dismantling the ABM treaty, which it calls a cornerstone of international security and which prohibits national missile defense systems. But the United States says it will go ahead with building a missile defense system because of potential nuclear threats from countries such as North Korea and Iran.
“If—even though we wouldn’t want this to happen—we are not able to come to an agreement with Russia, we will have to use our right under the treaty not to violate it, but to withdraw from it,” the Echo of Moscow site quoted Bolton as saying.
The treaty allows each side to withdraw from it six months after notifying the other side of its intentions.
Bolton was in Moscow this week as part of a series of consultations that began after President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in July that missile defense would be linked to talks on cutting the nuclear arsenals of both countries.
The Russian delegation emphasized the need to make cuts in strategic weapons "on the condition that the ABM treaty is preserved in its current
form," according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry.
Asked by the interviewer whether U.S. officials were aiming to make progress on the issue before a meeting between Bush and Putin tentatively planned for November, Bolton said that was the hope, but added that it could not be seen as a final deadline.
"I would imagine the presidents would be disappointed if by that time we have not achieved significant progress and they won't have anything to talk about at their meeting in Texas," he was quoted as saying.
Russian officials repeatedly have complained that they lack concrete information on U.S. missile defense plans, but Bolton said Washington had presented "an enormous mass of information to the Russian side about both the research program and the organization of our ballistic missile system."
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