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U.S. Envoy Gen. Zinni Meets Yasser Arafat

Aired April 05, 2002 - 12:01   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: We are going to start this hour with the new American effort to diffuse the situation in the Middle East. It began today in Ramallah, where the U.S. envoy, Anthony Zinni, has begun to pave the way for the expected arrival next week of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

CNN's Michael Holmes is in Ramallah to report on Zinni's meeting with Yasser Arafat.

Michael, it looks like the Israelis allowed that meeting to happen after all.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They did. There is a development though, Carol. I will get to in a moment.

As you said, General Anthony Zinni arriving at Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority headquarters today for that meeting, which the Israelis had allowed to take place. It lasted about an hour. It ended up in the formation of a Political Security Committee. It's a three-man group which is meant to work towards implementation of a U.N. resolution, 1402, which was passed last week. Also the implementation of the Tenet and Mitchell plans.

Now, what the new information we have is that that committee and it includes one Palestinian who is in Jericho. That is Saeb Erakat, familiar to most viewers as one of the senior Palestinian spokesmen, also the chief Palestinian negotiator, also a senior Palestinian in Ramallah, where we are now, and also another in Gaza.

The idea is that they would get together, meet together in one place, and would also meet with General Zinni perhaps as early as tomorrow in Jerusalem. We have heard on the Palestinian sources that Israel has nixed that. They will not allow the three to get together, to travel, to meet each other from the various West Bank and Gaza locations, nor, we are told, will Israel allow them to meet with General Zinni in Jerusalem, which makes it pretty difficult for this committee to get together and achieve much other than by cell phones, which can be fairly patchy in this part of the world at the moment. That is the latest.

This meeting went on for about an hour. It was described to us by sources as being -- quote -- "difficult" -- unquote -- Carol.

LIN: Difficult, speaking of difficult, the circumstances that are you in, I heard today that that bullet-proof vest came in handy.

HOLMES: Yes. It was an interesting situation. Of course, as journalists we hear other networks and CNN decided to go and cover the arrival of General Zinni, as one would assume we would do. We got there easily, which is not always easy to do in Ramallah. We were there for five minutes when two Israeli jeeps showed up, drove at speed towards us, five armored vehicles in a row, media vehicles, and almost immediately threw stun grenades into the group of 25 or so journalists standing there.

The three probably six or seven of these stun grenades. We, of course, got the message probably after the first one, and got in our cars and started to back away. As we did, a baton round, which is a sort of hard plastic project was fired at our windshield. We sustained a crack in the windshield. Fortunately, it is reinforced glass. As we drove away, a couple of rubber coated steel bullets were put in the back window. So we were hurried out of there in no uncertain terms, and the general feeling was if they had asked us in the first place to leave, we would have.

This came really without warning. It was initially quite a frightening experience, until we realized that what was being thrown at us were stun grenades and nothing more serious, even though they do make a loud bang -- Carol.

LIN: Boy, Michael, you're right. The message heard loud and clear -- please be very careful out there. We know your family, and we know you are working hard, and you love a great story, but as always, take every precaution. OK? Thank you very much -- Michael Holmes reporting live in Ramallah.

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