Palestinians urge world to challenge Bush policy

Furious Palestinians tried to rally the world yesterday against President George W. Bush's decision to break with longtime US and international policy to say Israel could keep parts of the West Bank captured in war.

Bush coupled what Israel hailed as a historic statement on Wednesday with an endorsement of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral Gaza pullout plan and a negation of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

The US "guarantees" gave Sharon what he wanted to win over Israeli sceptics of his plan to uproot Gaza's 20 settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank while retaining "for eternity" larger enclaves there with the bulk of the 230,000 settlers.

But UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticised Bush for ignoring the wishes of Palestinians, while the European Union emphasised it would not accept border changes unless they were agreed by both sides.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said he had proposed an emergency meeting of the quartet of the European Union, United States, Russia and United Nations, patrons of the "road map" for peace - stymied by unrelenting violence - and a Palestinian state.

He also called for an emergency summit of Arab countries. The Arab League accused Washington of bias.

"This is a catastrophe that has to be dealt with," Qurie told Reuters. "What is fixed is that we have rights and we will defend them."

Palestinians said bluntly Mr Bush had killed negotiations. Israeli officials say the Palestinians thwarted talks by failing to stop militants carrying out suicide attacks on Israelis.

Informed of Palestinians' reaction, Mr Sharon was quoted by two well-informed Israeli columnists covering his White House visit as saying: "They have a better understanding of the significance of (Bush's) letter than most Israelis. I said that we were going to deal them a lethal blow, and they were dealt a lethal blow."

Over decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States had officially viewed Israeli settlements implanted since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war as an obstacle to peace. Washington had also not come out so openly in rejecting the demand of Palestinians dispossessed in the 1948 war of Israel's creation to go back to lands now inside the Jewish state.

Mr Bush, who like Mr Sharon has made a battle against "terrorism" paramount in road map peacemaking, has now shifted to view at least some of the Jewish enclaves as permanent.