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President Bush makes a remark in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners October 20, 2005 |
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The last time President George W. Bush had Mahmoud Abbas to the White House, he heaped praise on the Palestinian leader as a courageous democratic reformer.
A reprise was likely Thursday, although the U.S. president may also enter a firm plea that Abbas screen out extremists as candidates in January's legislative elections and to dismantle Hamas and other terrorist Palestinian groups the State Department condemns for engaging in terror against Israel.
A top U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said Bush recognized that decisions to guide the elections are for the Palestinian Authority, and not outsiders, to make.
With Bush's support, the Palestinians are a step closer to what Abbas spoke of in May in the White House Rose Garden, when he said Palestinians were "in dire need of freedom" from Israeli control.
Since then - thanks largely to an initiative by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - Israel has relinquished Gaza, and has dismantled four Jewish Israeli communities in northern Samaria.
But almost all the 1.4 million Palestinians who live in Gaza are desperately poor. Abbas is seeking help from Israel to get November's harvest from the dismantled Jewish Gaza communities' crops to outside markets, and also would like to focus attention on Palestinian demands for full-scale Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Samaria - collectively the "West Bank" - and east Jerusalem.
The Palestinian leader also wants Bush to lean on Israel to drop curbs on Palestinian motorists using Judean and Samarian roads. The restrictions were imposed after another deadly terror attacks on Israelis in a drive-by shooting.
Abbas also would like Bush to call again on Israel to abandon makeshift outposts in Judea and Samaria that are said to be dismantled under the blueprint, or roadmap, to peace talks adopted by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia and accepted by Sharon and the Palestinian Authority. Abbas is expected to make these requests on Israel, despite his ongoing hesitancy and outright refusal to disarm terrorist groups like Hamas.
"Abbas is someone who is in a difficult situation," Ziad J. Asali, president of the private American Task Force on Palestine, said in an interview. "But he is looking to dispel the accusation that he is weak, and to show that he has a good understanding and analysis of his circumstances."
He also wants to form a partnership with the United States in resolving such issues as the Palestinian economy, Hamas, and lawlessness, Asali said.
Abbas is counting on legislative elections in January to advance Palestinian self-rule. But the travel restrictions are raising suspicions that Israel might oversee the balloting in its security need to throttle Hamas, whose participation in the Palestinian elections has Abbas' approval, despite US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling on Abbas to not allow the terror group, as they have no place in democracy.
In advance of Abbas' arrival, American diplomats registered with Palestinian officials a U.S. request that candidates in January's election be required to renounce violence as a means of easing tensions with Israel, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
But Edward Abington, a former U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem who advises the Palestinian leadership, said Abbas prefers bringing Hamas and other terrorist groups into the political process, where he hopes to bind them to law-and-order legislation.
"As far as running in an election, you cannot cherry-pick between those you like and those you don't like," Abington said in an interview. "But once they are in the legislature they will be bound by the decisions and the laws passed by the legislature."
Abbas may face similar requests to screen out extremist candidates when he meets with House and Senate leaders after seeing the president. Abbas also is to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney.
The AP contributed to this report.
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