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Professor Discusses U.S. Efforts at Israeli Peace

Aired March 20, 2002 - 10:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Vice President Dick Cheney is on his way home to the United States, but he could return to the region as early as next week to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Such an agreement carries with it conditions as well as cautions.

CNN's John King is travelling with the vice president, and he filed this report via videophone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: CNN has learned that if there is a meeting between the U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, it will be held in Egypt, and it could come as early as just before next week's Arab summit in Beirut. Another possibility is just after the summit, the calculation of U.S. officials being with the prospect of a one-on-one meeting with the vice president at hand, Mr. Arafat will closely watch his language if he attends that summit and not say anything that might insight violence against the Israelis back in and around the Palestinian territories.

High-stakes negotiations led to the idea that Mr. Cheney would put the prospect on the table. It was done after consultations not only with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, but a direct meeting between Gen. Anthony Zinni, President Bush's special envoy in the region, and Mr. Arafat, at which Mr. Arafat promised quickly to implement the so-called Tenet plan; increasing security cooperation; and bringing about, eventually, a truce between the Israelis and Palestinians.

At one point, the Palestinians wanted the meeting to be in Ramallah, but U.S. officials decided that would be inappropriate, not only because of security concerns, because they believe the meeting should be on neutral ground so as not to embarrass the Israeli prime minister, Aerial Sharon.

Why Egypt? U.S. officials say it was chosen because it is a neutral site, because it has been the past site of Mideast summit talks, and out of respect for the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who has asserted himself in recent weeks as well, trying to bring an end into the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Still no set date for the meeting, but the vice president is prepared to leave Washington early next week, if it comes before the Arab summit. The big if, of course, is whether Gen. Zinni believes over the next several days that Mr. Arafat has kept his commitment to implement a truce agreement and implement other security cooperation details included in that so-called Tenet plan.

John King, CNN, Ankara, Turkey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's now take a closer look at the Middle East peace efforts (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Anthony Zinni.

Our next guest this morning hosted Zinni last week at Ohio State University, where Zinni delivered a speech on the Mideast. Donald Sylvan is a professor of political science at Ohio State, and he has written about the Middle East and about political psychology as well. He has been gracious enough to join us this morning, courtesy of Columbus, Ohio.

We sure do thank you for your your time this morning, professor.

First of all, let me ask you did have you time to sit down and talk privately with Gen. Zinni?

DONALD SYLVAN, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: Yes, I did talk privately with him.

HARRIS: What did he tell you about, I guess, his optimism level going in?

SYLVAN: He confirmed a lot of things that I had thought beforehand, which is basically that this is a very long process. It is going to be a slow process by which the sides are brought together. It's a three-part process that focuses, as your report just showed, a couple of moments ago, Leon, on the security cooperation first. It moves from the issues of security cooperation to the possibility of economic cooperation, and only after those are nailed down does it move to political cooperation.

HARRIS: What, then, do you make, as an expert looking at this situation, of the odds that he can achieve something? We have just seen them bombing as recently as a matter of hours ago.

SYLVAN: Abosultely. Nothing is going to happen quickly. We as Americans typically expect the world to work very quickly. We expect something to happen yesterday. If you look at the process of Middle East peace, if anything is achieved, it is going to take a very, very long time. It is always going to be a process of three steps forward, two steeps back. What's very intriguing right now, though, Leon, and this is a really critical factor, is that both the Israelis and Palestinians have a very distinct incentive structure to state that they are trying to cooperate, to do their absolute best to win the PR battle with the world, saying we are the ones that are trying to cooperate, and the other side are the ones who are dragging their feet. And that's exactly what Zinni is trying to take advantage of.

HARRIS: I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one of the things that I want to make be sure we talk about today, because it appears as though, if you look at it from that perspective, the Palestinians have more of an incentive to continue the violence than they do to stop it. They have see that violence has brought the United States in and gotten them involved, it has brought Ariel Sharon to a situation where he is now actually being vilified in his own country. It's almost given them the upper hand here.

SYLVAN: I actually don't see it quite the same way that that would portray. Violence has part of it; there is absolutely no question that we have something that people have called the Lebanon or the U.S. Vietnam syndrome, which is that if there are enough attacks, eventually the side that values its people individually so substantially will actually pull back.

I think it is much more complex, though, than to say that just the violence has gotten us to this point. What we have is is a very complex issue, after September 11, we have a set of international circumstances where the Saudis, with their peace proposal primarily based upon trying to firm up ties with the West and make sure that the economic links are very substantial. We have the United States in this battle against terrorism in trying to form coalitions against Iraq. All of those are at least as substantial factors as the violence itself is. So it is little bit too simplistic to say that the violence alone has brought us to this stage.

HARRIS: What do you say to those who are now saying, and they are now saying it publicly and quite often, more so than we have ever heard, that the only solution right now that has any chance of making anything happen there is getting U.S. troops on the ground, to stay there as a sort of a police force or as a peacekeeping force there, keeping those two sides apart, and perhaps working in conjunction with Palestinian Authority forces as well to keep the peace?

SYLVAN: I do think that if there is a long-term agreement that that's a very distinct possibilities as a component of it. What I think most Americans don't realize, however, is this would not be unique. When the Israelis reached a treaty with the Egyptians in returning the Sinai to Egypt, as part of that agreement, a group of forces, many of them American, have actually set the buffer zone, if you will call it that, between the Israelis and the Egyptians in Sinai. They have been there for well over a decade. Today they are still there. The reason most Americans are not aware of that fact is that there hasn't been anything that has gone wrong. If, in fact, the two countries that fought wars in '48, '67, and '73 -- Egypt and Israel -- can actually live relatively peacefully with U.S. soldiers not getting hurt on the border, it does not strike me as being substantially different than saying there should be U.S. troops involved and some arrangement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

HARRIS: That is very interesting. I wonder how many other people share your view on that. Everyone we have talked to has said they don't believe that that is possible. But we will have to have that debate another day.

Professor Donald Sylvan, thank you very much for your time and insight.

SYLVAN: Thank you very much, Leon.

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