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Powell
Seeks Consensus To Build Post-Arafat Government
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| Powell
lobbying for a plan acceptable to the entire international
community as well as the Palestinians |
WASHINGTON,
July 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell aims to forge an elusive international consensus on
building a post-Yasser Arafat Palestinian government as he heads into
meetings this week with officials from the diplomatic “quartet” on
the Middle East and moderate Arab states.
With
virtually no public support in Europe for President George W. Bush’s
demand for Arafat’s ouster and none in the Arab world, Powell is
expected to focus his efforts on a general but wide-reaching outline
for Palestinian reform and international funds to support it,
officials said Monday, July 15, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Powell
meets Tuesday, July 16, in New York with U.N. chief Kofi Annan,
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and top European Union officials
to begin to hone what Washington hopes will be a plan acceptable to
the entire international community as well as the Palestinians
themselves.
Later
Tuesday, the quartet representatives will meet over an Annan-hosted
dinner with the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers, who are then
expected in Washington, along with their Saudi counterpart, for
meetings later in the week.
“The
idea is to bring all of these interested parties together and see if
we can start to make a big push for reform and the assistance the
Palestinians will need to achieve it,” one U.S. official said.
“It
won’t be easy, but we think that if we can minimize the debate over
Arafat the person and look to the broader question of reform, we can
really make some progress,” the official said on condition of
anonymity.
That
official and others said Powell and other U.S. officials wanted to
emphasize Bush’s long-range vision for the Middle East of two states
- Israel and Palestine - existing side by side in peace and security.
“The
focus of the meetings is to advance the president’s vision of two
states living side by side within secure and recognized borders and
continuing to assist the Palestinian people in their efforts to
implement reform,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher.
“That is
the light at the end of the tunnel,” another official said. “It is
a positive, not negative, view that has support from everybody. It’s
convincing people on how we should get there that's the problem.”
That
official said Powell would be hammering home the point with his
quartet colleagues and the Arab ministers that there was general and
widespread agreement that the current Palestinian leadership needed to
be reformed.
However,
the U.S. officials acknowledged that there were questions as to just
how much Arafat and his top aides could do in the current environment
with Israeli troops still conducting operations in the West Bank.
The Arabs
are expected to insist - as Arafat did in a letter to Powell last week
that has gone unanswered - that the Palestinians cannot be expected to
fulfill demands for reform while they are still subject to Israeli
occupation.
Powell, in
an interview with ABC News, said terrorism has thwarted Washington’s
effort to press Israel on withdrawal, the fate of Jewish settlements
and unpaid tax revenue owed the Palestinian Authority.
“All of
these issues have been discussed with the Israeli side, and we are in
intense discussions with them now,” Powell told ABC.
President
Bush, meanwhile, made clear he expected an eventual Israeli pullout
from Palestinian territories.
“Obviously
as security improves, Israel is going to have to, as I said, pull her
troops back to September of 2001 - 2000 levels,” Bush said Monday in
an interview with Polish journalists.
“In
other words - not levels, but geographic, within geographic boundaries
of September 2000,” he explained. “They’re going to have to deal
with the settlements.”
Maneuvering
around that obstacle will be a major topic of discussion in New York
and Washington this week, the officials said.
Meanwhile,
in Gaza, a Palestinian farmer was seriously wounded Monday night when
Israeli soldiers guarding the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the
Gaza Strip opened fire, Palestinian medical sources said.
No other
details were immediately available on the 55-year-old man, or what
prompted the soldiers to open fire.
In
Ramallah, the Israeli army informed Palestinian families living near
the northern entrance of the city that it will seize a field that is
currently one of the only ways for people to enter or leave the
reoccupied West Bank city, they told AFP late Monday.
The
landowners and neighbors were told the 1.5 hectare (3.7 acre) field,
located next to several houses and across from an army headquarters in
Beit El, was being seized for “security reasons,” the families
said.
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