Author: Jane Perlez
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 27, 2001
President Bush today urged Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to be more receptive to political steps
that the administration believes are necessary to cool the Middle East
situation, a senior administration official said.
But Mr. Sharon, who has insisted
that the Palestinians have not done enough to stop the violence, maintained
his position that there had to be zero violence for at least 10 days before
Israel would move to the next modest steps that the administration envisions
as leading toward peace.
"I made clear that when violence
and terror are over, we will insist on 10 days of absolute quiet, and if
there are 10 days, we will gladly move to a cooling-off period," Mr. Sharon
told reporters after meeting Mr. Bush.
Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush met at the
White House shortly before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell left for
a four-day trip through the Middle East, where he will try to shore up
the shaky cease-fire and prod Israelis and Palestinians to begin discussing
how to reduce the violence. It will be the secretary's second trip to the
region, but the first that is almost exclusively concentrated on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict.
Mr. Sharon, who came to the United
States for a fund-raising affair on Monday in New York and was then asked
to stop at the White House, will return to Israel in time to see Secretary
Powell there on Thursday.
A measure of the difficult task
that is confronting Secretary Powell on his trip to Egypt, Jordan, Israel
and the West Bank could be gleaned from the spirited exchange between Mr.
Bush and Mr. Sharon in the Oval Office before they sat down to business.
"There is progress being made, and
for that progress, we are grateful," Mr. Bush said as Mr. Sharon listened.
While Mr. Bush cautiously accentuated
the progress that he feels is occurring, the Israeli emphasized the extent
of killing that the Israelis were suffering at the hands of the Palestinians.
"One must understand that if last
week we had five dead, it's like the United States, Mr. President, having
250 killed, or maybe even 300 people, killed by terror," Mr. Sharon said.
He repeatedly returned to what he
said were continuing Palestinian violations of the cease-fire and his unwillingness
to enter into negotiations with Yasir Arafat while the violence continued.
"The Israeli position is that we
can negotiate only, and we would like to negotiate only when it will be
a full cessation of hostilities, terror, violence and incitement," Mr.
Sharon said. "Otherwise, I don't think we'll be able to reach a peace which
will really make all of us committed to."
Aides to Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush
tried to minimize the disagreements after the meeting.
Asked whether there was a rift between
Israel and the United States on how to proceed, Mr. Sharon replied, "I
would suggest not creating something that doesn't exist."
But Washington's emphasis on "100
percent effort" in reducing violence, compared to Israel's more demanding
emphasis on "100 percent results" by the Palestinians, seemed to be more
than diplomatic niceties.
Washington wanted to get on with
instituting the recommendations in a report by an independent commission
headed by former Senator George J. Mitchell. The document provides a series
of steps from cease-fire to political talks. It has become the bedrock
of the administration's efforts to reduce the violence and try to wrest
control of the situation.
In contrast, Mr. Sharon has insisted
that Mr. Arafat has not been serious about enforcing a cease-fire and that
the Palestinian leader has to show results that satisfy Israel before moving
on to the crux of the Mitchell panel's ideas.
Given the initial reluctance of
the White House to become involved in the Middle East, the meeting today
between Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon and the departure of Secretary Powell to
the region showed the stark reversal from a hands-off to hands- on position
over a period of less than five months.
In recent weeks as the cycle of
violence intensified, the administration dispatched William J. Burns, a
career diplomat, and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence,
to the region to work out a cease-fire and begin talks between Israeli
and Palestinian security officials.
Today, Mr. Bush told Mr. Sharon
that he was sending Secretary Powell to the region because he believed
that progress was being made.
"We believe we have a further opportunity
to advance the peace process," Mr. Bush said in the Oval Office. "This
is an important statement of the progress that's being made."
Secretary Powell is traveling at
a time of mounting complaints from friendly Arab countries that the United
States needs to do more to calm the situation and, in particular, to correct
the perception that the administration was being too lenient toward the
Israelis.
To try to assuage that discontent,
Secretary Powell plans to see Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on
a special stopover in Paris arranged for the end of the trip.
The administration was also criticized
last week by one of its most ardent supporters, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national
security adviser to the first President Bush, for not paying enough attention
to its Arab friends. At a Council on Foreign Relations session last week,
General Scowcroft was reported by a participant to have said that moderate
Arab countries were "deeply disappointed with this administration and its
failure to do something to moderate the attitude of Israel."
General Scowcroft added that there
had to be the promise of a viable Palestinian state or the Palestinians
would otherwise not stop their militant actions.
When he arrives in Israel after
a visit to Egypt, Secretary Powell's main goal will be to push the Palestinians
and the Israelis toward a "cooling-off period." The Mitchell report says
such a period would allow the two sides to adopt measures intended to build
confidence between them.
In Mr. Sharon's visit here, his
entourage was insistent that the Palestinians had not done enough to warrant
the move toward the "cooling period."
"The United States needs to exert
concerted pressure on Arafat," said a spokesman for Mr. Sharon, Raanan
Gissin. "Until Arafat takes the necessary steps, we cannot move ahead.
We can't make the mistakes of past administrations and negotiate while
Israelis are under fire."
