Gen. Ariel Sharon said today that Israel should attend a reconvened Geneva peace conference with the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. “I am for speaking with all Arabs,” the former Likud leader told an audience in Jerusalem this afternoon. “I say that we have to fight Arab terrorism with all the forces we have. But now we can talk to the PLO, We need to talk to Arabs, including the PLO. We shall have no other way.”
Sharon claimed that if Israel had fought terrorism by methods he once proposed “we might not have the PLO at all.” He did not elaborate. But he warned that Israel was mistaken to assume that it can gain time now that the U.S. is preparing to install a new administration. “We should have prepared a plan for advancement toward peace and not sit and wait,” he said.
The controversial Yom Kippur War hero announced at a press conference here yesterday that he was quitting Likud and would form a new party to stand in next year’s elections. According to foreign press reports, he met later with foreign newsmen and told them: “We talked with the Germans after they exterminated six million of our brethren, we talked with Syria after they tortured our prisoners. Why shouldn’t we talk with the Palestinians? We don’t have to exclude anyone.”
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