U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the latest suicide bombing in Israel threatens to derail Middle East peace efforts, and the White House questioned whether Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was "dedicated to violence" or to peace.
"Every time these events happen, it takes us off a course" toward peace, Powell said.
U.S. officials said the attack was likely to embolden advisers such as Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who have been pushing Bush to jettison Arafat from the peace process and give Sharon more leeway.
Powell holds a competing view: He has urged Bush to make equally balanced demands of Arafat and Sharon.
Bush was meeting late Wednesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II who said Arafat must be part of the peace process. "Simply from the fact that he is the symbol or the representation of the Palestinian people, he is relevant," the monarch said after meeting lawmakers.
Arafat's condemnation of terrorism, made earlier in the day on television in Arabic, met a long-standing U.S. demand. "He must move now to make a maximum effort to confront terror and violence," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
At a State Department session with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Powell said the bombing "puts at risk the possibility of going forward" on the peace campaign.
But he predicted the process would get back on track "because no matter how many military operations one conducts or how many suicide bombs are delivered, at the end of the day, we have to find a political solution."
Meanwhile, a total of 14 people have been arrested in connection with the Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Israel, EU Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos said after a meeting with Arafat.
"He told me he has arrested around 14 people in Gaza, and they will pursue the investigation to arrest (all) the people involved," Moratinos told AFP.
"We hope the response from the military of Israel will not harm the whole process," he said. Moratinos released no details of those claimed to have been arrested, but a senior Arafat aide had said that top Hamas leaders may be detained to avert a potential retaliatory strike by Israel.
Arafat is considering the option of "arresting senior Hamas leaders who have voiced support for suicide attacks," Mamduh Nofal told AFP.
Other steps being considered by the Palestinian leader including disbanding a 13-party Palestinian coalition, known as the National and Islamic Forces, which features Hamas and Arafat's own Fatah group, the aide said.
Hamas had sworn to Arafat at the beginning of May that it would not attack Israel, but it "has not kept its promise," a senior Fatah official told AFP.
For his part, the spiritual leader of Hamas vowed in an interview Wednesday that attacks against Israel would continue.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said Israel's military operation in the West Bank had not crippled his movement. "The Palestinian people will continue the armed struggle and resistance as long as occupation exists on our land," Yassin said. "We fear God only and we don't fear the aggression."
Yassin said the Palestinians had no other means of defense in facing the Israeli military offensives than attacking Israelis. "When they harm and hurt Palestinian civilians their civilians will be harmed," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel "Sharon began this war and this is a normal reaction to the Israeli massacres against Palestinians." (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
