Posted on 09/13/2001 6:27:44 AM PDT by SJackson
WASHINGTON (September 13) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in the strongest terms yesterday to meet as soon as possible, as he faced questions about whether the massive terrorist strikes on the US Tuesday could be linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Powell spoke with Peres, Arafat, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and called on them to settle squabbles about a venue and start talking.
"I encouraged all sides to get this process of meetings started that we have all been waiting for, for Mr. Arafat and Mr. Peres to find an opportunity in the very near future to meet and not have protracted discussions about where to meet. It's more important to meet," Powell told reporters at the State Department.
"So in this time of tragedy, in this time of heightened tension throughout the world and especially throughout that region, let's seize this opportunity to see if we cannot start this process of scheduled meetings so that we can get to the Mitchell peace plan."
Powell used a press conference on the US response to the terror attacks to volunteer his encouragement, illustrating how important he believes the meeting could be.
Powell said he will also raise the importance of a Peres-Arafat meeting in calls to Arab leaders, including Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.
The US had hoped that a meeting between Peres and Arafat would produce some type of breakthrough ahead of the UN General Assembly meetings that were due to open later this month.
It was not clear whether the meetings will still be held, however, following the attacks which have disrupted American air travel, finance, and just about everything else.
Powell said the US is dealing with the crisis of the attacks that killed an untold number of civilians, as the administration also keeps an eye on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said he hopes the massive terrorist strikes on US soil Tuesday will be a "sobering experience" for those in the Middle East.
"I hope everybody will realize that, no matter what you might think about the crisis in the Middle East, this is not the way to solve it. This is not the way to express your views about that, by killing hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians," Powell said.
"I hope that is sobering to anybody who has any civilized drop of blood flowing their body, and who believe in an Almighty of some form or another."
Some media began speculating to what extent the terrorist strikes on the US could be linked to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Asked for his view on the subject Powell said: "Obviously the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis has been going on for a long time and is always in the background.
"But some of the terrorist organizations that we have seen at work over the years conduct terrorist activities against the United States regardless of how the peace process may or may not be going, with respect to the Israelis and the Palestinians."
While American officials have yet to isolate a perpetrator, most of the US investigation is focused on links to the Saudi-born billionaire terrorist Osama bin Laden, wanted for a series of dramatic attacks on US targets in recent years including the bombing of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
But terrorism experts say that at the very least the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and mounting anti-Israel and anti-US sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world, arm terrorists with a reasoning they can perpetrate among their supporters and others.
"I think terrorism never occurs in a vacuum. Terrorists are always looking to place a specific attack in a wider political context and what better than to place it than in the Israeli-Palestinian context," said Bruce Hoffman, a leading Middle East terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation think tank. "It gives them a hook to hang the act on."
While Hoffman said the Palestinian issue would not be the main motivation of a terrorist like bin Laden or his followers, the issue "provides a convenient accelerant... makes it burn that much brighter and faster."
Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs and an expert on terrorism and the Middle East conflict, said US policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will now be framed by two competing schools of thought.
Some will say "what the hell are we very involved in this Middle East thing for. Our association with Israel makes us a target," he said.
Others will have a new found sympathy for the Israeli plight in dealing with Palestinian terrorism and say Israeli targeted killings "look pretty tame now," Rose said. "At the end of the day, I don't think it will result in a dramatic change in US policy; if anything, we'll see a hardening."
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the question of US policy in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular will take a back seat to fresh and more urgent US priorities.
"America's role in the world has changed. It's not just the issue does Bush meet Arafat in 10 days. Foreign policy has changed. The sense of national priorities has changed and that has an important impact on what we do in the Middle East. Everything we do there will be viewed through that context," Satloff said.
we should be telling arafat that he will sit down and shut up, and he will make his people sit down and shut up; we've seen the pictures of his people rejoicing and we are entirely prepared to solve the palestinian problem once and for all.
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