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Powell Outlines "Vision" for Peace Middle East
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky, Nov 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday told Israel to end its occupation of Arab lands and instructed Palestinians to control "terrorism", and dispatched an envoy on a new U.S. peace mission to the Middle East.
In a long-awaited statement of U.S. President George W. Bush administration's Middle East policy, Powell said he would send Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns to the region in a bid to start stalled peace talks.
He promised that the Bush administration had a "vision" for a peaceful Middle East, but laid out no new proposals for ending the violence, nor gave any sign that he could visit the region soon.
Powell insisted, as U.S. officials have for months, that the U.S.-backed Mitchell plan, which neither party has implemented, remained the only viable route to peace.
He said he had assigned retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, as a special advisor for the region and would send him there with the immediate aim of brokering a Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire.
"Get that ceasefire in place and other things can start to happen. Without that ceasefire, we are still trapped in the quicksand of hatred," said Powell in a speech at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
The Bush administration has faced intense pressure from the Arab world to engage more deeply in the Middle East, and turns to the region again as it presses home its war on terrorism.
Last month, Bush pleased Arab states who believe Washington is biased in favor of Israel by saying he believed in the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state - alongside the Jewish state.
Two months after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Powell said Palestinians must make a "100 percent effort to end violence and to end terror" directed at Israel.
"There must be real results... terrorists must be stopped before they act. The Palestinian leadership must arrest, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of terrorist acts."
While Powell directed the statement to the Palestinian Authority, the comment could cause increased fear among the Palestinians that it may help Israel justify its internationally condemned policy of assassination, which has claimed the lives of over 70 Palestinian political figures and activists in the past 14 months.
But Powell also had sharp words for Israel, calling on the government to recognize the pain caused by its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to end its presence there.
"For the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike, the occupation must end and it can only end through negotiations."
"Palestinians need security as well. Too many innocent Palestinians, including children, have been killed and wounded. This too must stop."
Powell made no mention of a time frame for an end of the occupation. Last month, U.S. officials backtracked after calling for an "immediate" withdrawal from certain Palestinian areas taken during an escalation of violence.
The Secretary of State also vigorously condemned Israel's practice of expanding settlements in the Palestinian territories.
"Israeli settlement activity has severely undermined Palestinian trust ... it prejudges the outcome of negotiations and in doing so cripples chances for real peace and security."
"The U.S. has long opposed settlement activity... settlement activity must stop."
Powell said the basis for an end to violence remained the Mitchell Committee report and the Tenet Security plan.
The Mitchell plan calls for a ceasefire, a six-week cooling off period and a freeze on building of Jewish settlements, accompanied by various confidence-building measures, before a return to political talks.
The Tenet agreement was a ceasefire deal mapped out by George Tenet, head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, designed to calm tensions to allow for the Mitchell plan to go ahead.
Powell also signaled that Washington had not discounted the idea of a third-party monitoring force to judge on the ground compliance to commitments made by both parties.
"The United States remains ready to contribute actively to a third party monitoring and verification mechanism acceptable to all parties," Powell said in what was billed as a major foreign policy address.
The leading Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations backed international observers to monitor a tattered U.S.-brokered truce in the occupied territories at a meeting in July, but only if both sides agreed.
Israel has objected to such an international force, while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has strongly pushed for third party involvement. Human rights groups have also urged the involved parties to accept international monitoring of the situation on the ground.
Despite Israel's continuance of the settlements and other issues diverging from U.S. recommendations, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed his satisfaction with Powell's words.
"It was a speech of primary importance," he said on national television. "We are satisfied that he recalled U.S. commitments to Israel and stressed that the Palestinians must recognize a Jewish state," he said.
And Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi also conveyed her approval, saying that Powell's speech sent an unequivocal message to Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land.
"I felt it was a very clear expression of intention on the part of the United States to be fully engaged," said Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker and spokeswoman for the Arab League.
The Palestinians had feared Washington could return to the hands-off policy that marked its approach to the crisis before the September 11 terror attacks on its cities.
"The expression of active engagement is encouraging, he sounded quite sincere. A quite significant step is the declaration that the Israeli occupation must end," she told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
She also lauded the fact that Powell based his calls on U.N. Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which demand Israel vacate the land it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Although Powell made no open demand for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to drop his insistence on seven days' complete calm before implementing international peace plans, Ashrawi said the intention was implicit.
She said the seven-day ceasefire demanded by Israel to test Palestinian commitment to peace was "an Israeli fabrication. There's no reason why he should respond to an Israeli fabrication."
But she said Powell "didn't talk about any conditionality, and the fact that he said [peace moves] would begin immediately was very encouraging. I thought it was implicit in his speech; maybe he should have said it explicitly, but then he would have to respond to every issue Israel raises."
Commenting on Powell's call for the Palestinian leadership to end a "culture of violence" and stifle anti-Israeli attacks, she said: "You cannot create a culture that has no relation to reality.
"You can teach people to love their neighbor, but not to love their occupier," she said.
Meanwhile, the council of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories expressed outrage at Powell's speech, especially his call for an end to settlement activity.
The Yesha council in a statement called on Sharon to "clearly condemn the words of Secretary Powell on the subject of freezing settlements and use of the term 'occupied territories.'"
"Yesha's settlements were built on the strength of our historical rights, therefore there is no reason to stop building. It is our right to use the land for the nation of Israel," the statement said.
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