Israel warns Palestinians not to choose 'Arafat's way'

Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei (also known as Abu Alaa) announced Sunday that negotiations on a new government had been completed and that the 24-minister line-up would be submitted to parliament Wednesday.

"Arafat is going to try to block Abu Alaa's government, the way he blocked Abu Mazen's," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin told AFP.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

Gissin was referring to the previous Palestinian government led by Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who resigned in September following a bitter striggle with Arafat over the control of the security services.

"If they want to go the way of Arafat's terrorist cartel, they're not going to have a state," Gissin said.

"However, we are willing to give a chance to Abu Alaa. Any government, whatever its composition will be judged by its performance in implementing the roadmap to peace," he said.

The roadmap is a peace blueprint drafted by the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, which calls for an end to violence and paves the way for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

Reuters adds: Israel's cabinet debated yesterday whether to approve a prison exchange with the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group that has put Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political prestige on the line.

While Sharon tried to persuade his cabinet to back the deal, Yasser Arafat appeared to emerge the winner in a struggle with Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie over composition of a new government to pursue peacemaking and on the delegation of security powers.

Under the German-mediated prisoner deal, some 400 jailed Palestinian and Lebanese would be traded for a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers killed in a Hizbollah border raid in 2000.

But the swap has run into opposition in Israel over Sharon's willingness to release the prisoners without receiving in return information about the fate of Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman who parachuted from his fighter-bomber over Lebanon in 1986.

"There is no need to define the importance of the decision the cabinet is being asked to make today," Sharon said in broadcast remarks at the start of what was likely to be a lengthy meeting.