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Netanyahu: Arafat Must be Treated like Saddam

(Jerusalem Post) In order for the U.S. to win its war on terrorism, the same standard Saddam Hussein is being held to must be used to remove Yasser Arafat, Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. Speaking in Jerusalem to a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Netanyahu said Israel's guiding principle, and the principle guiding the U.S. in its campaign against Iraq, is "no tolerance for terror and no tolerance for regimes that spawn terror." "If you want to stop terrorism," he said, "you have to take out those regimes and defeat this ideology." A Palestinian regime change is needed so that the notion of deterrence - of having something to lose - could be instilled in the new regime, he said. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, told the conference the type of prime minister Arafat seems intent on appointing constitutes anything but regime change. Weisglass said Arafat seems to see a new prime minister as a symbolic role under the president, similar to the French or Russian model. "As long as Arafat holds his position," Weisglass said, "nothing will happen." Weisglass said a key problem Israel has with the Quartet's road map is that although it is clearly performance-based, the Quartet itself will determine when one side has fulfilled its obligations under the plan.
2003-02-19 00:00:00
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