-Caveat Lector- By Arabs http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/100/nation/Arab_leaders_rebuff_plea_from_Pow ellP.shtml
}}}>Begin Arab leaders rebuff plea from Powell By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 4/10/2002 WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is confronting a wall of defiance in his Middle East peace mission this week - a wall thrown up by Arab leaders. The leaders of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in the past two days have refused Powell's call for them to speak out against suicide bombers and other forms of violence against Israel, and have declined to embrace any new peace plan without the active involvement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, US officials said yesterday. US officials had broached the idea of other Arab leaders taking the lead role in a new peace plan with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. In Washington yesterday, US officials seethed privately at the rebuffs to Powell. ''They don't seem to be helping and they ought to be, it's in their vested interest,'' said a senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''At least they should be speaking out publicly condemning the violence, because Sharon reads the papers and watches TV, too. There has got to be a mounting show of support for the position we have taken - which is, knock it off already - because if we're standing alone at end of day, we've got problems.'' Powell already was facing resistance by Sharon to President Bush's demand that Israel withdraw its troops from Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Sharon has delayed a full pullback from the West Bank, where fighting has raged since Israel's incursion March 29. The Arab rejection this week isn't the only dark cloud for Powell, who has been dispatched to the region by Bush to bring an end to the intensifying violence. In Washington, two influential Republican opinion-makers, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, sent a memo to the White House and to reporters saying Powell's trip ''was shaping up to be a disaster.'' The two said the United States was now pressuring Sharon to end the offensive, while ''giving a free ride to Arafat and the terrorists he directs.'' And inside the administration, Powell's statement yesterday that the United States was prepared to send US ''observers'' to the region to monitor an Israeli-Palestinian truce may not sit well with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has publicly opposed any US peacekeeping mission there. The senior US official said Powell had no concrete plan for observers. ''It's not a cop on every street corner, and it's not people just sitting behind closed doors,'' the official said. ''It's all to be defined. ... Just don't paint them as peacekeepers. They're observers.'' After meeting yesterday in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Powell stated clearly that he intended to meet with Arafat. On Sunday, he had also said there was no choice but to meet with the Palestinian leadership. The secretary of state has indicated he would be offering Arafat a way toward a political solution of the conflict - he talked about the creation of a Palestinian state - as long as the Palestinian leader worked to quell the violence. ''With that vision of a state, hopefully, hopefully, the Palestinian people will realize it is in their interest now to do everything they can to control their passions, to control the violence and bring it down so that we can get the political process moving,'' Powell said. After toying with a strategy that would have put Arab leaders on center stage in the peace process with a lesser role for Arafat, the United States now appears to be returning to Arafat as the key player in the current crisis. During the 12-day Israeli offensive, Israeli tanks have surrounded the Palestinian leader's building in Ramallah, confining him to two rooms. ''The US had been seeking a difficult strategy to regionalize the effort, asking Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Israelis over the heads of the Palestinian Authority,'' said Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American Research Center, in a telephone interview from Ramallah. ''But what has happened over the last few days is that the Arab political leadership made it absolutely clear they will have nothing to do with such an initiative. Powell got an earful from the king of Morocco, the Saudi crown prince, and the Egyptian president.'' Now, faced with the upcoming meeting with Arafat, US officials are expecting the bare minimum. Among various members of the Bush administration, including Bush himself, there is little stomach for dealing with Arafat, but in recent days there also has been the growing realization that Arafat's surge in popularity during the Israeli siege means he and Sharon are the two key players, US officials said. ''We're hoping we might get a public statement from him,'' said the senior US official. ''That's the start of it. You start there and the Israelis might let him out of jail. Then he could maybe walk out onto the streets, or meet people, something. It's all you got at the moment. It doesn't mean it's all we'll have forever. But at the moment, you have to play the hand you've been dealt.'' A Western diplomat in Israel suggested that Powell may be delivering a tough message to Arafat. ''You've seen what Bush said about Arafat; the administration is pretty fed up,'' said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''I see them giving him one last chance, but mainly because they don't know what comes next.'' Last Thursday, Bush, speaking as a ''committed friend of Israel,'' said of the Palestinian Authority, ''I expect better leadership, and I expect results.'' Bush, who has refused to meet with Arafat, pointedly called on ''Palestinian leaders and Israel's Arab neighbors'' to take the lead role for peace. Speaking about Arafat, he said, ''The situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making. He's missed his opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he's supposed to lead.'' Edward G. Abington, a Washington-based political consultant to the Palestinian Authority and US consul general in Jerusalem from 1993 to 1997, said yesterday that Bush's comments as well as other statements from senior administration officials have ''fed the perception among the Palestinians that the US was trying to bypass and circumvent Arafat. I think it stems from Bush's own feelings. ... I don't know if there is game-playing, or trying to put pressure on Arafat by doing this, but obviously that has broken loose now.'' Charles A. Radin contributed to this report from Israel. Anne Kornblut contributed from Washington. John Donnelly can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/10/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. End<{{{ By Israel >From http://www.thetimes.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-3-263699,00.html }}}>Begin April 11, 2002 Powell's mission snubbed by Israel >From Stephen Farrell in Nablus, Damian Whitworth in Washington and Philip Webster in London ARIEL SHARON defiantly toured a Palestinian town yesterday from which he has refused to withdraw troops, in a rebuff to international pressure to end operations in the West Bank. His response greatly complicates the peace mission of Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, who arrives in Israel today. The Israeli Prime Minister also described as a “tragic mistake” General Powell’s decision to meet Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. But the Secretary of State insisted that his mission was not in jeopardy, saying that he had decided to meet Mr Arafat because he was the elected leader of the Palestinian people. “I think if we are going to move forward, such a meeting is appropriate and important. He’s the leader of the Palestinian people, and I think the Palestinian people and the Arab leaders with whom I’ve met over the last several days believe that he is a partner that Israel will have to deal with at some point.” And, in a painful admission for the representative of a superpower, he added: “I hope that there will be no difficulties in arranging a meeting.” General Powell’s task has been made more difficult by the fact that Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat have rarely been so popular in their respective constituencies. Hours after a Hamas suicide bomb attack on a bus had killed eight Israelis and wounded 14 in the port city of Haifa, leading critics to question the entire thrust of his policy, Mr Sharon insisted that raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps would continue. The bomber, who came from Jenin, detonated an explosive belt soon after boarding a bus to Jerusalem early yesterday. David Baker, a spokesman for Mr Sharon, said the attack was further evidence that “the Palestinian terrorists’ appetite for terror has yet to be quenched”. Mr Sharon’s stance came despite a joint call by the UN, the United States, the EU and Russia for Israel to withdraw immediately from Palestinian areas. The statement said that there was no military solution to the conflict and appealed to Israel “to allow full and unimpeded access to humanitarian organisations and services”. Speaking in Jenin, the scene of fierce fighting and Palestinian claims of an Israeli massacre, Mr Sharon was cheered as he said to Israeli soldiers that he had told President Bush: “We are in the middle of a battle. If we leave, we will have to return. Once we finish, we are not going to stay here.” The Lebanese Shia radical group Hezbollah later offered to free Colonel el-Khanan Tennenbaum, a captured Israeli soldier, in exchange for the Palestinian militants trapped in Jenin. Colonel Tennenbaum, a reservist, was kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000, shortly after the start of the Palestinian uprising. Last night Israeli forces pulled out of the small West Bank villages of Yatta and Samua, near Hebron, and Qabatya, near Jenin. The Israeli Defence Ministry said that terrorist suspects had been arrested, and that weapons and explosives laboratories had been found. Binyamin Netanyahu, Mr Sharon’s rival within the right-wing Likud Party, has already dismissed the Powell visit, saying: “It won’t amount to anything”. Even Ehud Barak, the former Labour Prime Minister, has held meetings with Mr Sharon to co-ordinate Israel’s public relations offensive. Mr Netanyahu told senators in Washington that a political solution was not possible as it would reward terrorism. In a bitter address he said that the US was “losing its nerve” and if it selectively abandoned its principles it would lose the war against terrorism. Moshe Katsav, Israel’s President, rebuffed calls from the Pope for an end to the stand-off between Israelis and Palestinian gunmen inside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Last night a senior Palestinian official claimed that 500 Palestinians had died since the beginning of the Israeli operations in the West Bank. Tony Blair offered to send British observers to make sure that the Palestinian Authority kept wanted terrorists behind bars. He said that monitors could also be used to ensure that Israel and the Palestinians kept a ceasefire. End<{{{ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no automatic endorsement + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om