Arafat is finished, says Sharon

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Yasser Arafat was "finished", in his latest jab at the Palestinian leader, besieged by the army in his Ramallah office, the Maariv newspaper reported on Sunday.


Sharon made his comments during a phone conversation with Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei on Saturday, in a bid to defuse the crisis resulting from the army's siege of the headquarters compound, the daily said.


"Israel has no intention of harming him. As far as we are concerned, he can stay where he is as long as he wants, but our duty is to prevent him from encouraging terrorism," Sharon told Qorei.


"I hope the Palestinians will understand that Arafat is finished, having led them to disaster... For us, he has been finished for a long time," the Palestinian leader's arch-rival added.


Qorei also spoke to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Saturday to seek ways of ending the standoff, after Arafat refused to comply with Israel's demand for the surrender of some 20 security and intelligence commanders it accuses of links with militant groups.


For his part, Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, quoted in the same newspaper, said Arafat was "in a very difficult situation".


As Israeli bulldozers were tearing down everything around Arafat's last redoubt, Ben Eliezer said: "He is in a very difficult situation right now, because nobody is showing much concern over his plight.