Mideast talks could exclude Arafat
JERUSALEM (AP) – Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday embraced the idea of an international conference aimed at stopping Middle East violence and restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Sidestepping a clash with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who wants to exclude Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Powell said the meeting might be held at the foreign minister level.
But European and Arab leaders said any such conference needs Arafat’s presence to be effective.
“It’s a way to get the parties together and talking,” Powell said on the ninth day of a peace mission that has made little progress so far.
Pressing on, Powell will meet Tuesday with Sharon for a third time and is making arrangements to visit Arafat for a second time Wednesday in his battered Ramallah headquarters, U.S. officials said.
“We will maintain close contact with both sides in the coming days,” the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Sharon suggested the international conference to Powell at their meeting in Tel Aviv on Sunday, though Sharon objected to including Arafat.
Powell said the United States would not necessarily be host for such a conference and that Arafat could send high-level Palestinian officials to represent him if talks were held at the foreign minister level.
“We’ve got to move quickly to a political track and there are many ways to do that and one way is with a regional or international conference,” Powell said.
Sharon “gave some endorsement to that kind of idea” when they talked on Sunday “and Chairman Arafat did as well,” Powell said.
But Hassan Abdel Rahman, the top Palestinian official in the United States, said Sharon should first stop his incursion into the West Bank. “Nothing can happen before that,” he said in an interview from Washington.
Sharon, in a CNN interview, said Israeli forces would be withdrawn within a week from all towns and villages except Ramallah, where they surround Arafat’s headquarters, and Bethlehem.
He said they would stay in Ramallah indefinitely but quit Bethlehem if terrorists surrender for trial or exile.
Powell said he did not broach the idea of who would attend a conference except that representatives of both sides would be there. He said of Arafat, “It doesn’t necessarily require his presence to get started.”
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi endorsed a conference, saying such a gathering must include the United States, the European Union and the Arab League as well as Israel and the Palestinians.
French President Jacques Chirac expressed cautious optimism, saying a conference could be a “new road leading us in the right direction.” But Prime Minister Lionel Jospin warned that the conference wouldn’t make any sense if it excluded Arafat.
British Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw, interviewed by Channel 4 TV news, said, “We’re quite clear that Yasser Arafat is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people and any idea of a conference that is going to have a hope of solving this terrible crisis that excluded him is ludicrous.”
So far, Powell has been stymied on his trip by both sides. Sharon refused to promise a timetable to withdraw Israeli troops from the West Bank, and Powell could not win an unconditional pledge from Arafat to bring violence down.
Looking to secure a cease-fire, Powell said his top priority now is “to see if we can get security discussions going.”
In Washington, a senior U.S. official said a ministerial conference could be an important development but the White House was more interested in the cease-fire.
Powell took soundings in Syria and Lebanon Monday on the proposed conference, and warned leaders of the two nations that guerrilla attacks on Israel could spill into a wider conflict.
The Lebanese government said Arafat must be invited to a conference.
After failing to draw concessions from Sharon and Arafat, Powell said in Damascus that he wanted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s assessment on “a way forward to negotiations” to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He also took up with the Syrian leader, as he had with Lebanese leaders in Beirut, “some of the danger with respect to firing over the Blue Line,” the U.N.-drawn border between Lebanon and Israel.
Hezbollah guerrillas have fired rockets almost daily into Israel. Syria, which holds effective political and military control over Lebanon and is considered the militia group’s patron, helping to funnel weapons from Iran to southern Lebanon.
In Beirut, Powell met with Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud and then President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, warning that violence along the border between Lebanon and Israel could spread.
Hammoud, in a strongly worded anti-Israeli statement, suggested there was a need for some “objectivity” about the attacks, which he described as resistance to Israeli occupation.
Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians demonstrated as Powell arrived in Beirut. Protesters burned American and Israeli flags and shouted: “Powell Out!” and “Death to America! Death to Israel!”
The Lebanese officially support Hezbollah’s shelling of Chebaa Farms, a small disputed enclave held by Israel along the border after a withdrawal from southern Lebanon. There was no shelling Sunday on the eve of Powell’s visit.
Assad recognized that “it would not be in anyone’s interest at this point to not try to restrain Hezbollah,” Powell said.