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CNN Sunday Morning

Mideast Leaders to Meet With CIA Director

Aired June 10, 2001 - 09:16   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to tensions in the Middle East. Israeli and Palestinian officials are to meet with CIA Director George Tenet today as diplomatic efforts to strengthen a fragile cease-fire intensify but it comes amid more violence in the region.

We get the latest from CNN's Jerrold Kessel, live now from Jerusalem -- Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

This concerted international effort spearheaded by the United States to get the fragile Palestinian -- Israeli truce, which was based on two independently declared cease fires by the two sides consolidated into a real cease fire now focusing at this hour on another meeting -- a three way meeting -- the second that CIA Chief George Tenet will be having with the top security chiefs of the Palestinians and the Israelis. And this in the West Bank at this hour.

Mr. Tenet is expecting responses from the two sides to proposals that he made to them at that first meeting at the end of last week on ways to move away from the violence and to consolidate this very fragile truce which is now taking shape in a tentative form between the two sides. And he's expecting those answers at this meeting.

But that tentative truce is in a very precarious situation even more so after the first deaths indeed since Yasser Arafat came on board with his declaration of intent to go for a cease fire a week ago, this with the killing of three Palestinian women last night apparently by shrapnel from Israeli tank shells. The Israelis admit that they did fire shells in Gaza.

And the three women who were buried this morning in Gaza with an emotional funeral and cries of, "Revenge, Revenge" -- one of them a grandmother in her 60s, two of them members of the same family. There were two others also injured in that incident.

The Israelis say they did use tank fire but they say they were responding to Palestinian militants who had opened gunfire on one of their positions near an isolated Jewish settlement. But the Palestinian Authority is insisting that Israeli apologize and that this incident be condemned out of hand.

The Israelis say, no, they're first conducting a military investigation into what precisely happened but there has been expression of sorrow from the top U.S. envoy who has also been shuffling between the two sides, William Burns. And he expressed great sorrow for this new loss of life and hoping that the two sides will adhere scrupulously to their commitments to go for a cease-fire.

And this is endangering, indeed, the Tenet mission but paralleling and attempting to shore up the U.S. effort, there is a diplomatic effort by the European Community. And this is spearheaded by Sweden's Prime Minister, Goran Persson, who met this morning with Israeli's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. And he's accompanied by Javier Solana, the top European Foreign Affairs official.

They also met today with Yasser Arafat and in that attempt by the United -- by the European Community to shore up the U.S. effort, it's really clear that this -- that the intent by the Israelis and Palestinians to move away from violence and back to negotiations hasn't yet solidified in a way in which the international community can be satisfied but they've done what needs to be done to put that -- this very tentative relationship on a course toward -- back towards negotiations.

That's the situation influx at this very time, violence again but attempt -- real, dramatic attempt by the international community to supersede that violence and get that shaky truce consolidated into one to which both sides subscribe together. Miles?

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem, thank you very much.

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