The United States will "work hard" to help Palestinians establish their own state, but they must first overhaul their leadership, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.
The president "is going to work hard for a state for the Palestinian people so that they can live side by side in peace with the Jewish state, Israel," Powell told Fox News Sunday. "But it begins with new leadership that is fighting against terror, not tolerating terror or even encouraging terror."
Powell noted that, while US officials still talk to "a variety of Palestinian leaders," they have had no conversations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat since Bush delivered the speech on Monday. "At the moment, we are not dealing with him," Powell said, adding that he does not expect Washington to deal with Arafat in the future, either, "because his leadership is flawed."
Powell said that US officials "worked very hard for 18 months to try to get this peace process started, ... and at every step, it was thwarted by violence and terror, and Chairman Arafat simply did not provide the kind of leadership necessary to move forward."
He stressed that the "various security organizations" related to the Palestinian Authority that participate in terrorist activities "have got to be dealt with." "They are not only killing innocent Israelis. They're destroying the dreams of the Palestinian people," Powell said.
Powell expressed hope that Washington would be able to work with Palestinian leaders but said it did not seem possible under Arafat, a leader he said the United States views as "a disappointment."
He also stressed that the United States was not alone in calling for Palestinian reforms, noting that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had called for Arafat to step down and that even Palestinian leaders are "expressing some reservations about the kind of leadership they have received."
Powell said William Burns, the US assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, would travel to London early this week to discuss Bush's peace proposals with other members of the so-called "quartet" on the Middle East, which includes Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.
Powell said that he, too, plans to meet with members of the quartet, but he did not specify when that meeting would take place.
"What the president did was to finally say what everyone has been thinking," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's Meet the Press television show Sunday. "Unless there is a new dynamic, unless there is a change in this leadership, it is not going to be possible to move forward toward peace."
"This is not just about one man," Rice told NBC. "The Palestinians need institutions that, in fact, check the power of one person."
"We are not trying to pick the leadership of the Palestinian people, but we are saying that there are consequences," Rice added. "How can you work with a leadership that on one hand says it wants the peace process and on the other hand continues to work with terrorists who are undermining the peace process?"
"The United States of course will respect democratic processes. But the fact is that if a leadership emerges that will not deal with the problem of terrorism, the United States can do nothing to move this process forward," Rice said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
