US Secretary of State Colin Powell has clarified that a future "provisional" Palestinian state should have a territory and institutions even if they were not perfectly defined, denying there was "distance" between his position and that of the White House.
His remarks Wednesday came after he told Al Hayat daily in an interview that President George W. Bush favored the creation of a "provisional" Palestinian state, remarks that the White House distanced itself from while Powell was en route here for a G8 ministerial meeting.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said from Washington that Powell's comments were merely "reflecting" advice from world leaders, and that Bush had not signed on to the proposal, AFP reported. But Powell made clear there was "no distance or space" between what he stated and the official administration position.
"The concept of final political settlement and provisional interim steps have been part of the dialogue for months," he said. "If it is going to be a state, it will have to have some structure ... to have something that looks like territory, even though it may not be perfectly defined," Powell noted.
"When the president decides now that he has all these threads of advice together... watch what he will be deciding in the period ahead and how he will communicate to the American people, to the region and to the world how he thinks that we should all move forward." Powell was vague on the type of institutions to be available to an interim Palestinian state, stressing the need for a sweeping reform of the current Palestinian Authority.
"What kind of institutions? That's why we are focusing so much on transformation and reform within the Palestinian community and within the Palestinian Authority, to begin to create more accountable institutions," he said.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Yasser Arafat remains the Palestinian leader and "we have to deal with" him. Straw, speaking on BBC radio from the meeting of G8 foreign ministers in Whistler, Canada, said: "We have to deal with the leaders that are there for the time being. "We don't choose the leaders of other countries. And that obviously includes Mr. Arafat." (Albawaba.com)
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