Word: aqaba
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator who attended the Wye talks. "They're both very courtly, exceedingly polite and soft-spoken." During Abbas' tenure as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, Sharon invited him to Jerusalem and stood with him and George W. Bush at a peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan. Two weeks ago, Sharon privately told a U.S. visitor that he liked Abbas, though he added that he hadn't yet seen any attempt by the new Palestinian chief to rein in the terrorist groups. Sharon's bottom line for a return to peace talks is for Abbas...
...talks in Wye River, Md., in 1998, Sharon refused to shake Arafat's hand and pointedly ignored him--but he chatted amicably with Abbas on a sun deck there. In 2003, Sharon invited Abbas to Jerusalem and stood alongside him and President George W. Bush at a summit in Aqaba, Jordan. "Their personalities are very similar," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator. "They're both very courtly, exceedingly polite and soft-spoken, very measured in their words and tone...
When President Bush spoke last week about his vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East, it might have struck some as a canny effort to wrap his Iraq troubles in a fresh burst of soaring rhetoric. But the speech grew out of a trip in June to Aqaba, Jordan, where Bush met with then Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israel's Ariel Sharon. Speaking later to Republican congressional leaders, Bush "went off on a riff," says an official who was there, about the promise for democracy in the embattled region. California Representative Chris Cox issued an invitation...
...Tweaking," however, is not a concept one normally associates with Sharon. The Prime Minister, 75, is not a subtle man. At Aqaba, his statement started not with hopeful words on the proximity of peace but with this: "My paramount responsibility is the security of the people of Israel and of the state of Israel. There can be no compromise with terror. And Israel, together with all free nations, will continue fighting terrorism until its final defeat...
...ministers, "If the Palestinians don't like it, we offered them an alternative: to start taking care of business themselves." In the meantime, Sharon is determined to do Abbas' job for him. Someone, in his view, must. Late last week Israeli security sources told TIME that since the Aqaba summit, they had arrested 10 suicide bombers in various stages of planning attacks and that almost all the intercepted bombers belonged to Hamas...