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U.S.
Mounts Pressure On Arafat And Palestinian Authority
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| Arafat,
under virtual house arrest, faces mounting US pressure |
WASHINGTON,
Jan. 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. President, George
W. Bush's chief foreign affairs advisers are to meet Friday to
reassess the administration's Middle East policy, and to debate
exercising punitive measures on besieged Palestinian President,
Yasser Arafat, and his devastated Palestinian Authority (PA).
Several
senior U.S. officials said Thursday, January 24, that Vice
President, Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and
their senior aides have recent days advised Bush to suspend
relations with the Palestinian Authority, according to CNN
International.
Others,
however, have urged just the opposite, officials who asked not to be
identified told CNN.
Secretary
of State, Colin Powell, has told President Bush that he believes
it's important to maintain some sort of relationship with Arafat,
they said.
"There
is a creative debate going on about what is the best way to
proceed," one senior official said about the senior-level
discussions.
Meanwhile,
in a clear sign of mounting pressure on Arafat, who is already
confined in his Ramallah office and surrounded by Israeli occupation
army tanks, Bush allegedly provided three Arab countries with what
he described as evidence that Arafat's PA was involved in trying to
smuggle 50 tons of weapons to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, BBC’s
online news service reported Friday.
Bush
sent the alleged information in letters to the leaders of Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.
It
is still unclear, however, whether the alleged evidence contains any
direct implication of the Palestinian President.
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| Israeli
tanks, a daily threat to Palestinian civilians |
According
to the Washington Post, U.S. officials, particularly those centered
in Cheney's office, are weighing whether to suspend their
two-month-old peacemaking mission.
Others
in the administration are wary of slamming the door on Arafat,
fearing this could undercut American efforts to work with moderate
Arab states in the campaign against terrorism, the paper added.
Powell
believes that there would be "nothing to gain" by cutting
ties with Arafat, and that U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world
would not stand for such a move, one senior official said, CNN
reported.
While
exercising more pressure on the Palestinian President, whom the
American President has refused to meet since he came to power, Bush
is to meet far-right Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, for the
fourth time in February.
Late
Thursday, Sharon's office said the Israeli Premier had accepted an
invitation from Bush to meet with him February 7 in the United
States.
Several
senior officials said Powell spoke separately by phone Wednesday
with Arafat and Sharon. Arafat asked Powell to send U.S. Middle East
peace envoy, Anthony Zinni, back to the region to put a cease-fire
in effect, they said.
Powell,
however, said Zinni would not return to the region "without
some action" on Arafat's report, one official said.
Arafat
vehemently denied any knowledge of the weapons shipment said to have
been bound for the Palestinian territories on the Karine-A.
The
senior-level discussions come amid intense congressional pressure on
the Bush administration to take a harder line with Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority.
Rep.
Eliot Engel, D-New York, a member of the International Relations
Committee's Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, sent
Powell a letter Wednesday, calling on him to add the Palestinian
Authority to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Since
the deadly September 11 attacks, Israel has been trying to associate
Palestinian resistance groups with organizations labeled
“terrorist” by the United States, overlooking the fact that
Israel itself, occupying the Palestinians lands and practicing all
forms of atrocities against the armless Palestinian people, is
itself labeled a ‘terrorist state’ by many human rights groups.
But
U.S. officials insist on a legislation by Congress that calls on the
administration to take punitive measures against Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority.
Late
last year, a resolution was passed by the House and Senate, calling
on President Bush to suspend ties with the Palestinians.
Such
a move at present is unlikely, they said. "There are ideas
being tossed around," one senior official said. "But the
indications are that we are going to remain engaged."
The
administration's stance had already been shifting in recent weeks,
with senior U.S. officials far less willing to publicly criticize
Israel for its own misbehavior, such as the assassination of Arabs
and the invasion of Palestinian areas, the Post reported.
White
House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, Thursday issued an unusually blunt
endorsement of Israeli military measures to confine Arafat to his
West Bank headquarters.
"The
president understands the reason that Israel has taken the action
that it takes,” Fleischer said.
A
day earlier, Fleischer signaled that the arms smuggling attempt was
a watershed event that could disrupt the administration's efforts to
help broker an Israeli-Palestinian truce.
"All
the good work and all that good effort was then derailed as a result
of the arms shipment,” he said. This “has immensely complicated
the prospects for getting a return to the peace in the Middle
East."
It
is worth noting that the U.S. administration gives Israel an annual
sum of one $ billion in military aid.
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