Leah Rabin, the widow of slain former Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin said she considered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the only partner for peace and voiced disappointment with Prime Minister Ehud Barak's handling of the Middle East crisis.
"If Yasser Arafat is not a partner, then we don't have another partner. The only partner is Arafat. He is the leader, the unquestioned leader. Every leader has his difficulties with his own people," she said in an interview with Radio France obtained by AFP on Saturday.
An month-long explosion of violence across the West Bank and Gaza Strip has killed almost 150 people and left the peace process in tatters.
Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo peace accord with Arafat seven years ago, was assassinated in November 1995 by a right-wing Jewish extremist angered by his peace policies.
Asked about Barak's performance, Leah Rabin said: "I don't think he is the ideal person to lead the situation right now. He is there a year and a half and it is a total disappointment."
"When my husband was conducting the peace process, he used to say: 'I'm conducting the peace process as if there was no violence, and I'm fighting violence as if there was no peace process'," she added -- JERUSALEM (AFP)
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