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Powell Says He Has No Plans to Speak With Arafat
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| Arafat
must be dealth with as the elected leadership of the
Palestinian people
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With
additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem, IOL
Washington
D.C.
WASHINGTON
, June 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – As Israel began it’s
new stretch of fencing around Occupied Jerusalem, the Bush
Administration continued to assert that Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat’s rule must come to an end.
U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell on
Sunday, June 30, 2002
, said he has no plans to speak with Arafat at the moment.
"At the moment, we are not dealing with him," Powell said,
adding that he does not expect
Washington
to deal with Arafat in the future, either, "because his
leadership is flawed."
Nonetheless, President George W. Bush "is going to work hard for
a state for the Palestinian people so that they can live side by side
in peace with the Jewish state,
Israel
," he said.
"But it begins with new leadership that is fighting against
terror, not tolerating terror or even encouraging terror," he
cautioned.
Powell noted that
U.S.
officials still talk to "a variety of Palestinian leaders,"
but he said they have had no conversations with Arafat since Bush
delivered his June 24 speech outlining his vision for peace in the
Middle East
.
He said William Burns, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near
East affairs, will travel to London early this week to discuss Bush's
peace proposals with other members of the so-called
"quartet" on the Middle East, which includes the European
Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
In his speech, Bush called for Arafat, who has been accused by the
U.S. and Israel of not doing enough to stop anti-Israeli violence, to
be replaced as a condition for U.S. support for a Palestinian state.
Critics of the
U.S.
calls for a replacement state that no country has the right to decide
for any other country who its leaders should be.
“It is up to the Palestinian people to decide who their leader is.
You deal with the country’s leadership and Arafat is the elected
leadership of Palestinian people,” Margaret Zaknoen, Program
Director of American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ), a Washington
D.C.-based political advocacy organization.
The Palestinians
aren’t thrilled with Ariel Sharon. But for better or worse he is the
elected leadership of Israeli people,” she continued.
Powell said he, too, plans to meet with members of the quartet,
but he did not specify when that meeting would take place.
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