White House officials are expected to discuss US Middle East policy on Monday, with the focus on the possibility of deploying American monitors in the Occupied Territories, sources said.
Senior Bush administration officials will also evaluate US regional interests, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stability in the Middle East, and the degree to which US involvement is required at this time, the sources told Haaretz newspaper.
Based on the current plan under consideration, a team of approximately 10 American monitors from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will be sent to the region in order to report on violations of the CIA-brokered ceasefire between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
The observers will also monitor the implementation of the Mitchell report's recommendations.
Veteran diplomat Richard Erdman is expected to head the US monitoring team, they added.
According to the paper, the US administration has still not officially contacted Israel with a proposal to deploy the monitors in the territories.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and his aides are in favor of an immediate deployment of the monitors.
The State Department, said Haaretz, believes that this would help quell the criticism which the Bush administration's handling of the Middle East crisis has faced from Congressional leaders, from its allies in Europe and from the Arab World.
However, at the White House, reservations have been expressed regarding the deployment, fearing that a decision to send monitors will result in a direct confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
For their part, State Department officials believe that it will be possible to convince Sharon that the deployment of US monitors will “benefit Israel,” the sources said.
In a related development, Palestinian officials on Saturday denied Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ remarks that the Palestinians had rejected increasing the number of US monitors in the Occupied Territories.
“The allegations are baseless,” an official statement said, carried by the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
“The Palestinian leadership agrees with increasing the number of US troops in addition to increasing the number of other monitors from other countries to guarantee the brokered ceasefire and the implementation of the Mitchell report recommendations,” said the statement.
On Saturday, Palestinian Minister of Planning Nabil Shaath, speaking Saturday in an interview on Palestinian Radio, said his administration opposed the deployment of ceasefire observers from the US alone, and instead proposed a mix including Europeans, Israel Radio reported, quoted by Haaretz.
Shaath said that an observer force had to provide real monitoring on events in the Occupied Territories and deter Israeli attacks.
Israel has maintained its opposition to international observers. However, following pressure from international leaders at the G8 summit held last week in Genoa, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer suggested that Israel might be willing to accept a team of observers if it were comprised of Americans only.
A recent poll in Israel has shown that the Israelis support a monitoring force comprised of CIA officials, who are already involved in Palestinian-Israeli security talks.
The CIA has a long record of covert operations in developing countries, going back to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam in which many thousands were killed, and support for terrorists groups such as the Nicaraguan contras, who targeted health care workers and teachers in the 1980s – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
