-Caveat Lector-
By Arabs
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/100/nation/Arab_leaders_rebuff_plea_from_Pow
ellP.shtml
}}}>Begin
Arab leaders rebuff plea from Powell
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 4/10/2002
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is confronting a wall of defiance
in his Middle East peace mission this week - a wall thrown up by Arab leaders.
The leaders of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in the past two days have refused
Powell's call for them to speak out against suicide bombers and other forms of
violence against Israel, and have declined to embrace any new peace plan without
the active involvement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, US officials said
yesterday. US officials had broached the idea of other Arab leaders taking the lead
role in a new peace plan with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
In Washington yesterday, US officials seethed privately at the rebuffs to Powell.
''They don't seem to be helping and they ought to be, it's in their vested interest,''
said
a senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''At least
they should be speaking out publicly condemning the violence, because Sharon
reads the papers and watches TV, too. There has got to be a mounting show of
support for the position we have taken - which is, knock it off already - because if
we're standing alone at end of day, we've got problems.''
Powell already was facing resistance by Sharon to President Bush's demand that
Israel withdraw its troops from Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Sharon has
delayed a full pullback from the West Bank, where fighting has raged since Israel's
incursion March 29.
The Arab rejection this week isn't the only dark cloud for Powell, who has been
dispatched to the region by Bush to bring an end to the intensifying violence. In
Washington, two influential Republican opinion-makers, William Kristol and Robert
Kagan, sent a memo to the White House and to reporters saying Powell's trip ''was
shaping up to be a disaster.'' The two said the United States was now pressuring
Sharon to end the offensive, while ''giving a free ride to Arafat and the terrorists he
directs.''
And inside the administration, Powell's statement yesterday that the United States
was prepared to send US ''observers'' to the region to monitor an Israeli-Palestinian
truce may not sit well with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has publicly
opposed any US peacekeeping mission there. The senior US official said Powell had
no concrete plan for observers.
''It's not a cop on every street corner, and it's not people just sitting behind closed
doors,'' the official said. ''It's all to be defined. ... Just don't paint them as
peacekeepers. They're observers.''
After meeting yesterday in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Powell
stated clearly that he intended to meet with Arafat. On Sunday, he had also said
there was no choice but to meet with the Palestinian leadership.
The secretary of state has indicated he would be offering Arafat a way toward a
political solution of the conflict - he talked about the creation of a Palestinian
state -
as long as the Palestinian leader worked to quell the violence.
''With that vision of a state, hopefully, hopefully, the Palestinian people will
realize it is
in their interest now to do everything they can to control their passions, to control
the
violence and bring it down so that we can get the political process moving,'' Powell
said.
After toying with a strategy that would have put Arab leaders on center stage in the
peace process with a lesser role for Arafat, the United States now appears to be
returning to Arafat as the key player in the current crisis. During the 12-day Israeli
offensive, Israeli tanks have surrounded the Palestinian leader's building in
Ramallah, confining him to two rooms.
''The US had been seeking a difficult strategy to regionalize the effort, asking
Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Israelis over the heads of
the Palestinian Authority,'' said Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American
Research Center, in a telephone interview from Ramallah. ''But what has happened
over the last few days is that the Arab political leadership made it absolutely clear
they will have nothing to do with such an initiative. Powell got an earful from the
king
of Morocco, the Saudi crown prince, and the Egyptian president.''
Now, faced with the upcoming meeting with Arafat, US officials are expecting the
bare minimum. Among various members of the Bush administration, including Bush
himself, there is little stomach for dealing with Arafat, but in recent days there also
has been the growing realization that Arafat's surge in popularity during the Israeli
siege means he and Sharon are the two key players, US officials said.
''We're hoping we might get a public statement from him,'' said the senior US official.
''That's the start of it. You start there and the Israelis might let him out of jail.
Then he
could maybe walk out onto the streets, or meet people, something. It's all you got at
the moment. It doesn't mean it's all we'll have forever. But at the moment, you have
to play the hand you've been dealt.''
A Western diplomat in Israel suggested that Powell may be delivering a tough
message to Arafat. ''You've seen what Bush said about Arafat; the administration is
pretty fed up,'' said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''I see them
giving him one last chance, but mainly because they don't know what comes next.''
Last Thursday, Bush, speaking as a ''committed friend of Israel,'' said of the
Palestinian Authority, ''I expect better leadership, and I expect results.'' Bush, who
has refused to meet with Arafat, pointedly called on ''Palestinian leaders and Israel's
Arab neighbors'' to take the lead role for peace. Speaking about Arafat, he said, ''The
situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making. He's missed his
opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he's supposed to lead.''
Edward G. Abington, a Washington-based political consultant to the Palestinian
Authority and US consul general in Jerusalem from 1993 to 1997, said yesterday that
Bush's comments as well as other statements from senior administration officials
have ''fed the perception among the Palestinians that the US was trying to bypass
and circumvent Arafat. I think it stems from Bush's own feelings. ... I don't know if
there is game-playing, or trying to put pressure on Arafat by doing this, but obviously
that has broken loose now.''
Charles A. Radin contributed to this report from Israel. Anne Kornblut contributed
from Washington. John Donnelly can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/10/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
End<{{{
By Israel
>From http://www.thetimes.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-3-263699,00.html
}}}>Begin
April 11, 2002
Powell's mission snubbed by Israel
>From Stephen Farrell in Nablus, Damian Whitworth in Washington and Philip
Webster in London
ARIEL SHARON defiantly toured a Palestinian town yesterday from which he has
refused to withdraw troops, in a rebuff to international pressure to end operations in
the West Bank. His response greatly complicates the peace mission of Colin Powell,
the US Secretary of State, who arrives in Israel today.
The Israeli Prime Minister also described as a “tragic mistake” General Powell’s
decision to meet Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. But the Secretary of State
insisted that his mission was not in jeopardy, saying that he had decided to meet Mr
Arafat because he was the elected leader of the Palestinian people.
“I think if we are going to move forward, such a meeting is appropriate and important.
He’s the leader of the Palestinian people, and I think the Palestinian people and the
Arab leaders with whom I’ve met over the last several days believe that he is a
partner that Israel will have to deal with at some point.”
And, in a painful admission for the representative of a superpower, he added: “I hope
that there will be no difficulties in arranging a meeting.”
General Powell’s task has been made more difficult by the fact that Mr Sharon and
Mr Arafat have rarely been so popular in their respective constituencies.
Hours after a Hamas suicide bomb attack on a bus had killed eight Israelis and
wounded 14 in the port city of Haifa, leading critics to question the entire thrust of
his
policy, Mr Sharon insisted that raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps would
continue.
The bomber, who came from Jenin, detonated an explosive belt soon after boarding
a bus to Jerusalem early yesterday. David Baker, a spokesman for Mr Sharon, said
the attack was further evidence that “the Palestinian terrorists’ appetite for terror
has
yet to be quenched”.
Mr Sharon’s stance came despite a joint call by the UN, the United States, the EU
and Russia for Israel to withdraw immediately from Palestinian areas. The statement
said that there was no military solution to the conflict and appealed to Israel “to
allow
full and unimpeded access to humanitarian organisations and services”.
Speaking in Jenin, the scene of fierce fighting and Palestinian claims of an Israeli
massacre, Mr Sharon was cheered as he said to Israeli soldiers that he had told
President Bush: “We are in the middle of a battle. If we leave, we will have to return.
Once we finish, we are not going to stay here.”
The Lebanese Shia radical group Hezbollah later offered to free Colonel el-Khanan
Tennenbaum, a captured Israeli soldier, in exchange for the Palestinian militants
trapped in Jenin. Colonel Tennenbaum, a reservist, was kidnapped by Hezbollah in
October 2000, shortly after the start of the Palestinian uprising.
Last night Israeli forces pulled out of the small West Bank villages of Yatta and
Samua, near Hebron, and Qabatya, near Jenin. The Israeli Defence Ministry said
that terrorist suspects had been arrested, and that weapons and explosives
laboratories had been found.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Mr Sharon’s rival within the right-wing Likud Party, has already
dismissed the Powell visit, saying: “It won’t amount to anything”. Even Ehud Barak,
the former Labour Prime Minister, has held meetings with Mr Sharon to co-ordinate
Israel’s public relations offensive. Mr Netanyahu told senators in Washington that a
political solution was not possible as it would reward terrorism. In a bitter address
he
said that the US was “losing its nerve” and if it selectively abandoned its principles
it
would lose the war against terrorism.
Moshe Katsav, Israel’s President, rebuffed calls from the Pope for an end to the
stand-off between Israelis and Palestinian gunmen inside Bethlehem’s Church of the
Nativity. Last night a senior Palestinian official claimed that 500 Palestinians had
died
since the beginning of the Israeli operations in the West Bank.
Tony Blair offered to send British observers to make sure that the Palestinian
Authority kept wanted terrorists behind bars. He said that monitors could also be
used to ensure that Israel and the Palestinians kept a ceasefire.
End<{{{
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