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Powell To Stay In Region “As Long As Necessary”
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Colin Powell |
JERUSALEM, April 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) –U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters he would stay in the region “as long as necessary” after failing to nail down an Israeli timetable for rolling back their West Bank military offensives.
Powell met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who resisted U.S. pressure to end the two-week-old aggressions against the Palestinians and came out of the session Friday saying only that he hoped to wind up the push "shortly."
Pressed as to whether Israel had agreed to a timetable for pulling back on the West Bank, Powell said, "I don't have a specific answer on timing."
Sharon showed no sign of an imminent end to the offensive where hundreds of Palestinians were killed over the past two weeks. Palestinians killed since the beginning of the 18 month long Intifada against illegal Israeli occupation to roughly 1800.
Powell flew in Thursday after Israel refused to heed U.S. calls to “withdraw without delay” from Palestinian towns it invaded two weeks ago. He met later Friday with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and was to see Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
On Saturday, the chief U.S. diplomat was to hold talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at his besieged West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
Powell told reporters he would stress to Arafat the need to end the wave of anti-Israel attacks, news agencies reported.
Powell said his talks had gotten "off to a good start" and stressed he had put no time limit on his bid to broker a ceasefire and set the stage for more comprehensive political talks.
"The conversations have just begun and I am prepared to stay here for as long as is necessary in order to make sure we have some progress as a result of this mission," he told reporters after conferring with Peres.
The Israelis defend their military push, which has left more than 250 Palestinians dead and 4,000 in detention, as a "war of survival." Powell also said that United States “understood the Jewish state's need to protect itself”.
But he did add a veiled criticism of the Jewish state’s refusal to withdraw despite international – including U.S. - condemnation, saying, "We have to take note of the long-term strategic consequences of the incursions that are under way and its effects on the nations of the region and the international climate."
The United States and Israel are also at odds over the standing of Arafat, blamed by Israel for the attacks and at the same time dismissed by the Sharon government as "irrelevant" weeks ago.
Powell said it was "important" to meet with him. Sharon described the move as a "tragic mistake."
Sharon has had Arafat imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters since the end of March when the Israeli army commenced an aggressive offensive against the compound, leaving many injured and refusing to allow food and medicines into the compound during the initial days of the attack.
The Sharon-Powell meeting came with tensions rising further amid the Israeli massacre of the West Bank refugee camp in Jenin where a senior Israeli official conceded Friday that they had killed about 250 Palestinians.
Palestinian leaders, who suggest the death toll could be higher, called for an international inquiry into the week-long siege of the Jenin refugee camp and appealed to Powell to take a first-hand look.
But Powell was scheduled later Friday to tour Israel's northern frontier with Lebanon which has been increasingly the scene of recent cross-border attacks by the resistance group Hezbollah, officials said.
Powell has not responded to a Palestinian request to visit Jenin.
"All parties in the region must play a role to restrain any aggressive activities across Israel's northern border," Powell said, in a reference to Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah's main sponsors.
The Israeli army is still deployed in force across much of the West Bank, and controls most major Palestinian towns. Sharon has vowed to create what he says are "buffer zones" to “protect against further attacks”. Palestinians and much of the international community, however, condemn these “buffer zones” as an Israeli attempt to further carve up the Occupied Territories into apartheid era Bantustans, making a viable Palestinian state geographically impossible.
Powell hopes to revive the stalled talks on security measures proposed by CIA chief George Tenet and a longer-term peace blueprint developed by an international panel chaired by former U.S. senator George Mitchell.
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