Powell downplays Mubarak peace offer

UPI ^ | 3/5/02 | Eli J. Lake

[truthandlife]

The United States responded with caution Monday to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's offer to host a peace conference for the Israeli and Palestinian leaders as violence in the region spins further out of control.

"His idea is an interesting one," Secretary of State Colin Powell said after a meeting with the European Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. "But of course it's up to the two individuals, Mr. Arafat and Mr. Sharon to decide which forums the would participate in."

When Mubarak meets with President Bush Tuesday he is expected to offer formally to host peace talks between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Over the past week, dozens of Israelis and Palestinians have died in the most intense fighting this year.

Mubarak told the Chicago Tribune in an interview Sunday, "The only way is that the two parties could come and sit together. No other way out. This is a vicious circle now. We need to make a breakthrough. This vicious circle must stop. We are ready for any kind of call for peace. We will sit in Egypt. We will sit in New York -- anywhere -- just to release the tension."

Mubarak has hosted Middle East peace conferences before, most recently in October 2000 at Sharm el-Sheikh when then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat met with U.S., E.U., Jordanian and Egyptian delegations to iron out a cease fire agreement that -- in the end -- neither side kept.

The Egyptian leader makes his offer as a Saudi proposal for peace in the Middle East is gaining currency in Washington as a possible long-term strategy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That plan, which Powell again praised on Monday, would promise normalizing Israeli-Saudi ties in exchange for Israel retreating to the territory it held prior to its victory in the 1967 six day war.

Over the weekend, a certain amount of cold water was poured over the Saudi plan in the region itself. On Sunday Sharon pointed out that no Israeli government has ever agreed to return to the pre-1967 borders -- which would, for example, mean surrendering Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem.

That same day, Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a statement issued jointly with his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud, also appeared to distance himself from the plan. While careful to avoid mentioning the Saudi proposal directly, the statement declared that any settlement must include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to any future Palestinian state, something not included in Abdullah's proposal.

Mubarak arrived in Washington on Sunday in his first trip to the United States since the Sept. 11 attack. In an interview published Monday with the Washington Times, he said Egypt has been very cooperative with the United States so far in the war on terror. "We have given the Americans since Sept. 11 a great deal of help, but this is not declared. Intelligence help, names, other things which I don't want to be put into the paper," he said.

But Mubarak's government has also come under criticism as well. In January, the Central Intelligence Agency published a report on ballistic missile proliferation saying it had "continued its long-standing relationship" on ballistic weapons with North Korea -- a charter member of the President's axis of evil.

U.S. officials Monday said they expected the missile proliferation issue to come up in talks, but added that it would not be a high priority in the President's meeting.

[Free the USA]

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