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Friday, February 08, 2002 Shvat 26, 5762 Iran is top worry, Sharon to tell Bush By Nathan Guttman WASHINGTON - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will meet tonight (after midnight Israel time) with U.S. President George W. Bush for the fourth time since taking over the reins of power in Israel. From Sharon's point of view, the meeting is expected to focus on efforts to convince the United States that Iran constitutes a strategic threat to Israel. The prime minister will also ask Bush to keep up the pressure on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and force him to take action against terrorism. The talks yesterday between Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell served as a preparation for Sharon's scheduled meetings in Washington. In his talks with Cheney, the defense minister stressed that Iran, which was expected to be equipped with nuclear weapons by 2005, represented a far greater threat to Israel than did Iraq. Ben-Eliezer also noted that the Shihab 3 Iranian missiles were capable of striking at any point in Israel. In his talks with the U.S. vice-president, Ben-Eliezer also charged that Iran constituted a regional threat and a danger to the stability of the Middle East. "The danger, as I see it," the defense minister said after the meeting, "is from a Hezbollah-Iran-Palestinian triangle, with Iran leading this triangle and putting together a coalition of terror." Sharon will also emphasize the Iranian threat in his talks with the U.S. leadership, making it clear to the president that from Israel's point of view, Iran is the principal threat in the region. This threat, Sharon will say, has become even more concrete in the wake of the Karine A weapons ship affair, which exposed Tehran's involvement in efforts to exacerbate the situation in the territories. On the Palestinian issue, Sharon foresees Washington's willingness to continue to pressure Arafat. Appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday, Powell said that Arafat must choose, once and for all, the path of peace, rather than war: "Arafat must act decisively against the hotbeds of terrorism," he said. Powell did promise, however, that the United States had not given up on its vision of an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. "The process was suspended because of the violence and the Karine A affair, which showed that the Palestinians are not serious in their desire for a cease-fire." In his talks in Washington, Ben-Eliezer said that there was no point in speaking now about "a political horizon" for the future of the relations between Israel and the Palestinians. First and foremost, he said, there was a need to work toward a cease-fire and the resumption of a dialogue, rather than trying to implement more complex plans. Ben-Eliezer will meet today at the Pentagon with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Among other issues on the agenda, the two will discuss possible scenarios in the event of an American attack on Iraq. Yesterday, Ben-Eliezer asked Powell to give Israel ample forewarning of such an attack. Speaking at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy yesterday, Ben-Eliezer revealed that he had passed on messages recently to Syrian President Bashar Assad, via the leaders of Egypt and Turkey. In his messages, the defense minister said, he had asked Assad to restrain Hezbollah and to return to the negotiating table with Israel. |
