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CNN Live Today

Zinni Wants To See More Than Pledges in Middle East

Aired March 22, 2002 - 13:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: But again first up this hour, we start in the Middle East, where Israelis and Palestinians did sit down to talk about security today, and there was yet another grisly reminder of the stakes here. The third Palestinian suicide bombing of the week was less destructive than the others, slightly wounding just one other person, an Israeli officer at a checkpoint on the edge of the West Bank.

CNN's Mike Hanna, watching all the events, has this update in a report from Jerusalem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The cease-fire negotiations continuing, despite being buffeted by ongoing acts of violence on the ground. Palestinian and Israeli security negotiators met through the day. The meeting mediated by Special U.S. Envoy Anthony Zinni. Each side has given to Zinni an outline how it believes a cease-fire plan should be implemented on the ground. Being discussed at this point what the demands, the desires, the insistence of each side, Zinni very much in that mediation and position.

Earlier in the day, Zinni met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The meeting with Arafat followed a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem Thursday, in which three Israelis were killed and dozens were injured. In the wake of that attack, Israel insisted this further evidence that Yasser Arafat was not doing enough to crackdown on the activities of militants to prevent attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

Yasser Arafat condemned the Jerusalem bombing attack, said he would do whatever is necessary to hunt down those who helped plan that attack. While Zinni, in the meeting in Ramallah, made the point he wants to see action on the pledges, that at this stage in the midst of cease-fire negotiations, pledges are not enough.

Even as negotiators were meeting, another act of violence, what the Israeli Defense Force said was a Palestinian suicide bomber carried out an attack at an army checkpoint in the West Bank. The bomber killed himself when he detonated an explosive device attached to his body. Two Israeli soldiers nearby were slightly injured in the attack. This attack is just a reminder of the ever-present violence, if that was needed after a series of suicide bomb attacks in recent days. Mike Hanna, CNN, Jerusalem.

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