Posted on 06/24/2002 8:58:15 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
ASHINGTON, June 24 — President Bush's public demand that Yasir Arafat be replaced as the Palestinian leader began in private 10 weeks ago in a small room in Mr. Arafat's besieged and battered headquarters in Ramallah, with tough talk from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
"I told him the direction in which they were moving had to change in a very fundamental and strategic way, and we had to see that if he wanted the United States to be a partner in this moving forward," Secretary Powell recalled in an interview tonight. "To be blunt, we haven't seen enough of that."
For months, as the administration's chief diplomat, Secretary Powell has carefully sought to balance demands on Israel and the Palestinians, logging scores of hours of conversations with Mr. Arafat even when other top advisers urged Mr. Bush to cut off relations. For months, he repeated the obvious: that the Palestinians, and most of the rest of the world, saw Mr. Arafat as their designated leader, whatever his shortcomings.
So Secretary Powell's comments today represented a distinct shift, one that he took some pains to express comfort with.
"I'm very pleased," he said of Mr. Bush's announcement. "I've been working with my colleagues on this almost nonstop."
Secretary Powell's comments offered the clearest reflection of how discussions with Israel and Arab and European allies, continuing waves of suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals, and months of sometimes intense internal debate finally led President Bush and all of his senior national security advisers to agree: Mr. Arafat would have to go.
The internal debate squared off Secretary Powell and the State Department's Middle East experts against the camps of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who were less willing to get involved in the conflict and more inclined to support Israel uncritically.
But in recent weeks, one senior administration official said, a strong consensus emerged on the need for change and reform of the Palestinian leadership.
"We all got to where we had to be," the official said. "The essence of the message is that the president has looked seriously at how to change the situation, and to do that we need a substantial transformation of the Palestinian Authority. That's reality."
Secretary Powell said of the new approach, "It really captured not only our disappointment with the current leadership, but expressions of disappointment and regret we've heard from Arab leaders, as well as within the Palestinian community."
Trading on his reputation as one of the administration's most respected figures, he sought to explain one of its most important foreign policy efforts, pointing out: "The headline, of course, will be `new leadership.' And that is a strong and powerful headline."
In return for a change in Palestinian leadership and a crackdown on terror, Secretary Powell added, Mr. Bush has committed his personal and official prestige to establishing a Palestinian state within three years.
"Toughness is like a windshield wiper," he said. "It can swing from one side to the other. If they do what is necessary, then obligations will fall on the other side, and I am quite confident the president will expect all parties — the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Israelis — to meet their obligations."
Secretary Powell said that he expected to travel to the region for consultations soon, though not immediately, and that a planned ministerial conference on Middle East peace "has to wait, I think," in light of continuing suicide bombings and Israeli occupation of several towns on the West Bank.
"It's hard to conceive of circumstances in which we should be having a meeting in the next few weeks," Secretary Powell said. "But the president still felt it was important to put out this vision and way forward."
Senior officials said they imagined that Mr. Arafat might well stay as a figurehead leader in a new Palestinian government.
But over and over again today, they made it clear that they expected Palestinian elections would produce a new leader to control day-to-day operations, finances and the like.
Secretary Powell acknowledged that Mr. Bush had "some tough medicine in the speech, especially in the first part," in which he talked about the Palestinian leadership.
He emphasized that the speech also put demands on Israel, saying, "You'll also see some serious obligations that are expected from Israel, including an end to the occupation that began in 1967," through negotiation on the basis of two United Nations resolutions, 242 and 338.
State Department officials said they hoped Mr. Bush's explicit mention of the 1967 war would be seen as a nod to the Arab world, which insists that Israel withdraw to the territory it held before that war began, while also acknowledging longstanding language about Israel's right to "secure and recognized borders."
In Middle East diplomacy, every word always counts. Israel insists that it can never be safe within the 1967 borders, and officials said Mr. Bush's formulation had been deliberate.
"It's trying to say we acknowledge that this is what has to be solved, but it doesn't completely buy into the '67 borders," one official said. "But it's something that Arabs will look at and say, `At least the starting point is the occupation.' "
Several administration officials said the challenge for Mr. Bush, in a climate of persistent bombings and unstinting domestic political support for Israeli reprisals against the Palestinians, was how to sketch a plan that would have any chance of changing the realities.
One official acknowledged, "How we move this forward, once everybody's spoken to it, is still not clear to me."
Secretary Powell began that process today with telephone calls to foreign ministers and other diplomats from Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and the United Nations, and said he expected to continue such consultations in the coming days.
"The real question now is: this is the U.S. strategy for the Middle East," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"There were things for Israelis to do, things for the Palestinians to do," she added. "But what is the administration going to do to implement this policy? He didn't say the Secretary of State will set up a permanent mediation office and we'll have all sorts of people coming and going to make it clear to the parties that this is an offer they can't refuse. A speech is not enough."
Bingo, my friend. I knew it was media BS -- a barely disguised attempt to portray as chaotic and clueless.
Bingo, my friend. I knew it was media BS -- a barely disguised attempt to portray the admin as chaotic and hopelessly clueless.
That is probably what CNN will spin tomorrow!
FWIW....I believe that GWB listens to all sides but he makes the decisions....Powell respects that and is loyal to his President.
Yes! Grrrrrrr!
The press could know nothing but what they tell themselves or get Democrats to lie about.
Just like the way Republicans are always in "disarray" around election time, but 'rats never are.
This should help quiet some of the naysayers shouldn't it?
Arafat must go, sweetest words I have heard lately!
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