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Arafat Under Growing Pressure



JERUSALEM (AP) - In the aftermath of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank, Yasser Arafat is coming under growing pressure at home - not just from the United States and Israel - to clean up his Palestinian Authority.



In stormy meetings with the Palestinian leader in recent days, Cabinet ministers and senior activists in his Fatah movement made a host of demands: municipal elections within eight weeks, voting for a new parliament within six months, a crackdown on corruption and a trimming of the unwieldy security apparatus.



They warned that if the Palestinians don't put their house in order, they will become increasingly vulnerable to U.S. and Israeli dictates. "We must do reforms our way, not the American way,'' said Hussein al-Sheik, Fatah leader in the West Bank.



Yet Arafat remained unmoved.



During a Cabinet meeting last Friday, two days after Israel released him from 34 days of confinement at his West Bank headquarters, he held lengthy monologues about the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon to avoid responding to the reform demands, one of the participants said.



When ministers insisted he get back to the issue at hand, he angrily walked out of the room, sources said. Persuaded to return after a few minutes, he said now was not the time for major changes, but offered to form a committee to look into the complaints - a time-tested Arafat technique for stifling dissent.



Arafat has not commented in public on the reform issue. ...
Good grief, even members of his Cabinet see that Arafat is taking them down the road to perdition's flame. Maybe he really wants to be a martyr.

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