Qorei Is A "serious" Partner For Israel, Says Peres

JERUSALEM, July 30 (AFP) - Israel's Labour opposition chief Shimon Peres said on Friday that Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei was a "serious" partner for negotiations with the Jewish state.
"Abu Ala is experienced, serious, ready for compromise, committed to peace and against terror," he told a Jerusalem press conference, using Qorei's nickname.
"We can negotiate with him," added Peres, himself a former premier.
He said Israel might even be able to help Qorei by involving him in discussions about Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip by 2005.
Peres and Qorei were among the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to dismantle all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank but has insisted on a unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians, among whom he claims he no longer has any interlocutor.
The plan has caused outrage within Sharon's right-wing coalition. Two ministers were sacked over their opposition to the pullout and a third left the government on his own. Sharon consequently lost his majority in parliament last month.
Peres' Labour has been in negotiations with Sharon since to form a broad national union government.
But the center-left party is insisting on three conditions regarding the Gaza evacuation, which Peres stressed again on Friday.
Labour wants a timetable for the withdrawal to speed up the process which should start, according to Peres, within a month.
The largest opposition party also insists that the pullout be coordinated with the Palestinian Authority and, thirdly, that it "be the first step and not the last step," of a withdrawal, said Peres.
"I want to enter a government which has a clear engagement for withdrawal," he also said.
He said negotiations to join the government should end "in the next two or three weeks."
The majority of Sharon's right-wing Likud party members and part of its leadership are opposed to a national union government with Labour.