Qurei: Sharon's plan of settlement evacuation 'good news'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Qurei: Sharon's plan of settlement evacuation 'good news'

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Tuesday described his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate 17 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as "good news".

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Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Tuesday described his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate 17 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip as "good news".

"It is good news for us," Qurei told Voice of Palestine, in his first public response to Sharon's announcement a day earlier.

"We hope that Israel will withdraw from all Palestinian areas," he added.

Sharon stunned Jewish settlers and members of his own Likud party Monday by revealing that he had ordered plans to be drawn up for the evacuation of 17 of the 21 settlements that Israelis set up in the Gaza Strip.

"It is my intention to carry out an evacuation -- sorry, a relocation -- of settlements that cause us problems and of places that we will not hold onto anyway in a final settlement, like the Gaza settlements," Sharon told the online edition of the Ha'aretz daily.

"I am working on the assumption that in the future there will beno Jews in Gaza," Sharon said.

The step would be part of the disengagement plan that Sharon has reiterated in public many times and that entail troops withdrawal and redrawing the border.

Source: Xinhua

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