White House: Bush plan also requires that Israel take action
WASHINGTON - The White House clarified Tuesday that President George Bush's plan for peace announced the previous day obligates Israel as well as the Palestinians to take action in order to reach peace.
"We view this as parallel tracks going hand in hand, not as a sequencing sort of arrangement," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
With many in the Arab world calling Bush's speech on Monday tilted toward Israel, U.S. officials insisted Israel had responsibilities to carry out and that the Israelis could not sit back and wait on the Palestinians to choose a new leader.
Aides pointed out that Bush never said anything about sequencing, noting the president said that as the security situation improves, Israeli forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to Sept. 28, 2000, which would free up about 40 percent of the West Bank.
Bush also said that as violence subsides, Israel should allow freedom of movement for the Palestinians and release frozen Palestinian revenues.
"The president planted the seeds and now it's up to the parties to nurture those seeds, grow them, and the United States is there to help," Fleischer told reporters traveling with Bush on the way to an international summit in Canada.
Fleischer said Bush believed strongly that "if the parties want to find a way out of the violence, they need to heed his call."
"The president believes his speech represents the best hope for the Palestinian people, and he believes that his speech represents the best long-term hopes of Israel. He is very worried about the future viability of Israel unless a Palestinian state is created," he said.
The U.S. is beginning the implementation of the Bush plan on lower levels. The State Department instructed its representatives in the Middle East to start working contacts with governments in the region in order to promote the plan's implementation and adoption by all sides.
A date has stil not been set for Secretary of State Colin Powell to come to the region, and the State Department said that Powell would come only following the completion of an initial round of contacts and an assessment of the Bush plan's chances for success.
After Bush's speech, Powell had telephone conversations with Arab and European foreign ministers to explain the president's plan.
U.S. wants Arafat to lead reform process, then to step aside
The United States wants Yasser Arafat to lead the reform process demanded by Israel but step aside when his task reaches completion, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
In the meantime, the United States will work with Arafat's Palestinian Authority, possibly even with Arafat, and would like security cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians to resume immediately, he said.
Colin Powell, in an interview with the U.S. government's Radio Sawa, said on Tuesday: "We will remain in touch with the Palestinian leaders. As you know, we still have a charg there, and we are in touch with different Palestinian leaders as recently as yesterday."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States still considered Arafat as a leader and expected him to show leadership against Palestinian militants.
"He's currently in a leadership position. We continue to look to him to take responsibility, to exercise authority and to exercise leadership," he told a daily briefing.
"The Palestinian leadership needs to move forward ... on these issues of creating new institutions and leadership that can uphold the new state," he added.
The existing leadership, including Arafat, needs to sign laws that reform Palestinian institutions and handle the finances during the interim period, he added.
The senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, said: "We know he is the leader...We would hope that he would work himself out of a job."
Boucher, asked if Powell would now refrain from contacts with Arafat, said only that no such contacts were planned. He did not rule out contacts between Arafat and the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Ron Schlicher.
On security cooperation, a basic element in the previous U.S. approach to mediation between Israelis and Palestinians, he said: "That's something we're still looking for."
"Right now we think that security cooperation remains important and that there should be security cooperation with whatever security institutions are prepared to step up to the plate and take some responsibility," he added.
By Nathan Guttman, Ha'aretz Correspondent and Agencies