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Powell to Mideast As Sharon Starts Washington Mission
UNITED NATIONS, June 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke Monday ahead of his departure for the Middle East of his hope that the Mitchell plan to end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians would be swiftly applied, after the hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in the U.S. Sunday for talks with President George W. Bush.
"I'm anxious to move to the Mitchell plan, but that will be driven not by the calendar but by events on the ground," Powell told reporters here on the sidelines of a U.N. special assembly to discuss HIV/AIDS.
Powell is due to depart Tuesday for the Middle East to try to save a fragile truce brokered by CIA director George Tenet.
He is due to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as representatives from neighboring Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Powell also indicated his intentions to meet Tuesday in Washington with Sharon alongside the Israeli former general's meeting with the president.
A senior member of Sharon's entourage said Monday that in his meeting with Bush, Sharon will seek to bolster ties with the United States by pointing to so called terrorist threats both countries face.
The Israeli leader arrived in New York late Sunday after a brief stop in London where he touched on similar topics in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to the senior Israeli official.
Sharon told Blair that occupation resistance effort is the most serious threat to stability in the region, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity
Israel stresses that the Palestinian Authority has not lived up to a ceasefire condition of arresting activists involved in occupation resistance operations.
"These activists were to be arrested without delay, but nothing has happened," an Israeli official said aboard the plane carrying Sharon to the United States.
"Israel refuses to go any further unless the halt to the violence is total and duly verified on the ground."
How Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat see the current state of affairs in the disputed region is among Powell's priorities, he told reporters, to "get their assessment of how the situation has developed and see how quickly we can move forward to an even lower level of violence."
Asked whether he planned to unveil new ideas, Powell firmly stated "the idea I am taking to the region tomorrow night is the Mitchell plan," referring to the plan formulated by an international panel headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell. "There are no new proposals or political plans."
The Mitchell report called for an immediate ceasefire followed by a cooling-off period, and confidence-building measures - including action by the Palestinians against violent occupation resistance activities and a halt to Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory - to usher in a new round of peace talks.
Sharon has thus far refused to stop new construction in the settlements of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, where 200,000 Israelis live among more than three million Palestinians on land captured by Israel in 1967. The settlements are illegal under international law.
Nevertheless, Sharon will get a red-carpet welcome in Washington for holding fire in the face of some of the worst Palestinian violence ever, including a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco that killed 21 people.
It will be Sharon's second meeting with Bush since he assumed the position of prime minister on March 7.
Arafat has not been invited to the White House since Bush became president in January, but former Sen. Mitchell has expressed the opinion that Arafat should also be invited.
"Yes, I do," he said in response to a question from a journalist who asked whether such an invitation would be appropriate.
"I think that is the intention of the administration at the appropriate time," he said.
Mitchell likewise encouraged Powell to "continue to do the best he can to gain full implementation" of the report.
Powell's visit could not come at a more crucial time to shore up U.S. involvement in the troubled region. Since the truce Tenet cajoled out of both sides June 13, nine Palestinians and six Israelis have been killed, bringing the total number of fatalities well above 600.
"Right now we are going through the George Tenet work plan which hopefully will improve security coordination, calm things down to a level where the sides would agree to announce the beginning of the cooling-off period of the Mitchell plan," Powell said.
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