PM Netanyahu: No foreign troops in PA territory

      The international guarantees Israel is seeking to ensure that a future Palestinian state remains demilitarized does not mean the introduction of foreign forces, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the cabinet at its Sunday meeting. Expanding on his speech last week at Bar-Ilan University in which he said international guarantees were necessary to make sure a future Palestinian state would be demilitarized, Netanyahu said rather that Jerusalem wanted international acceptance of the principle that Israel could take the actions it thought necessary to ensure the future state's demilitarization. "We need effective measures to ensure demilitarization," Netanyahu said. "The existing ones in Lebanon and Gaza are not effective." Netanyahu said that Israel wanted international recognition for the idea of a demilitarized state to avoid a situation wherein Israel would withdraw from territory that was to be demilitarized, the Palestinians would violate that agreement and then Israel would be blamed for going back into the Palestinian territories to destroy weapons. The prime minister stressed that Israel's security could not be safeguarded without demilitarization, and that demilitarization did not detract at all from Palestinian self-determination. "I don't understand why for self-determination the Palestinians need Kassam and Grad rockets," the prime minister said. "I understand they need a strong police and security apparatus, and we encourage that, but do they need tanks, artillery or rockets?" (23,55)