The Bush administration had been preparing a major Middle East peace initiative and was ready to back and recognize a Palestinian state, but was put off by the September 11 attacks in the US, major American papers reported on Monday.
According to The New York Times and the Washington Post, the initiative was to be presented in a speech to be given by US Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. This would have been the first time for a Republican to have backed a Palestinian state, the Times said.
Citing unnamed sources, the Post said that Powell had planned to discuss the initiative with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, on September 13. It added that President George W. Bush's administration also had been contemplating a meeting between him and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during the United Nations General Assembly meeting that had been scheduled to start 10 days later.
The meeting would have been the first between Bush and Arafat, according to the paper.
Bush is still considering making a forceful declaration on resolving the Middle East's most intractable crisis, but the timing has not yet been decided, unnamed administration officials were quoted as saying by the Times.
The Bush administration had been resisting a summit between the two sides unless Arafat demonstrated what it called "greater efforts" to rein in "violence" by Palestinians.
US officials judged that a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly session would carry less symbolic significance than an invitation for Arafat to visit the White House.
According to the Post, Bush and his National Security Council had approved the initiative and the plan for Powell's speech in mid-September at a meeting at the White House days before the terrorist attacks.
The initiative signals a shift in the Bush administration's policy towards greater involvement in the Middle East, but it had been sidelined by the drive to muster a global coalition against terrorism following the attacks that left 5,700 people dead or missing, according to AFP.
The Bush initiative might not have gone as far as the detailed proposals President Bill Clinton had made in the final days of his administration.
The decision on the Palestinian state, however, was not final, according to an official cited by the Post.
There were a number of things the Palestinians were going to be very pleased with in the speech, but the administration was also going to call on the Palestinians to "meet their responsibilities" in cracking down on the "violence."
The speech, first reported last night on the New York Times' web site, also was going to lay out general principles for settlement of the most difficult issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They included determining final borders and the status of Palestinian refugees, and the question of whether they would be allowed to return to areas now both within Israel and within Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
