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American Morning

Interview with Saeb Erakat, Dore Gold

Aired April 29, 2002 - 07:07   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: For more now on the president's proposal agreed to by both the Israelis and the Palestinians that will allow Yasser Arafat to leave his Ramallah compound after a month of virtual house arrest. President Bush says Arafat is now free to leave, and that it's time for Arafat to -- quote -- "earn his respect by taking action against terrorist activities."

Joining us now live on the phone from Jericho, Saeb Erakat, chief Palestinian negotiator -- welcome back, Mr. Erakat.

SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: Thanks, Paula.

ZAHN: When do you think Mr. Arafat will be able to leave the compound?

ERAKAT: I thought last night. I thought the Israelis would act in good faith after the agreement was concluded, and after we agreed that we would meet today with experts in order to conclude the modalities and all of the technical issues. I thought that the Israeli government would move in good faith and lift the siege and withdraw genuinely this time from Ramallah, from other areas and implementation of Resolution 1402.

Unfortunately, as I am talking to you, Paula, there are severe activities still taking place now in the president's compound. They are really destroying every building in the compound, including the presidential cars. They are firing some kind of sound bombs now at the president's compound, having loudspeakers.

And you know, they killed also another person at the Nativity Church today. We were supposed to see as part of the agreement today that civilians who wish to leave the nativity church would leave, and that food and medicine and water will get to the nativity church. Unfortunately this has not happened. And it seems to me that every time we open a door, Sharon slams back in our faces.

ZAHN: Have you had any contact with Israeli officials today directly about the situation you say is unfolding in the compound?

ERAKAT: Well, I tried actually. I tried to call some of the Israelis who will still talk to me actually in the foreign ministry or the defense ministry. I am still waiting to hear from them, because I wanted to raise the issue of the incursion, the military incursion into Hebron, to the occupation of Hebron, the killing of nine Palestinians and wounding of 25.

I think at this stage what we need to do in good faith is to take the President Bush proposal, take it in good faith, try to use it as a mechanism of the escalation and the confliction and then build on it. And that's what we intend to do, that's what we plan to do, but unfortunately, we are not given the chance not until now by the Israeli government.

ZAHN: When Mr. Arafat has the ability to move, where is he going to be traveling to first?

ERAKAT: Well, I think President Arafat has a lot to do. He has a lot of reconstruction to build. Paula, I don't know if we have an authority out there or not. There was extensive (ph) damage done to our civilian infrastructure, to our security infrastructure. I think we are back at least 30 years in terms of the water networks, the electricity networks, the roads, the sewage, the trees, the schools, the hospitals.

There is a lot of rebuilding out there, and we are really counting on the good offices (ph) of the donor countries in the U.S., Japan, Europe. We began serious meetings with them, and I think President Arafat will devote most of his time now to rebuild what was destroyed and in order to stand up again, in order to signal that we are here to stay and we are here to continue the peace process.

ZAHN: Mr. Erakat, in the meantime, President Bush says Mr. Arafat needs to lot -- to do a lot to restore his credibility. And here is exactly what the president had to say yesterday about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have called upon Mr. Arafat in the past. I will continue to call upon Mr. Arafat to lead. Somebody asked me one time a while ago, they said, has he disappointed you? Has he lost your respect? I said, well, he hasn't earned my respect yet. He must earn my respect by leading. And there are a lot of people, a lot of Palestinians who are suffering, and now is the time for him to step up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: What initially, once Mr. Arafat is allowed to move, do you think he needs to do to live up to what the president has demanded here?

ERAKAT: You know what, Paula, let me be very frank and say I am real disappointed at President Bush. It's time for President Bush to treat President Arafat as a president and not as a prisoner. How can someone stand up and lead when he is a prisoner? And who will he lead? A nation of 3.3 million prisoners?

Paula, I have been trying to leave Jericho to go and conclude the agreements with the president and other Israelis and Americans and Europeans, and I haven't been able to leave Jericho. So I think there should be a sense of fairness with President Bush when he addressed this. We are not running away from our responsibilities. We said we would carry all of our obligations emanating from agreements signed, including the security ones, but we need to be given the chance.

President Arafat is literally a prisoner, and there are 3.3 million Palestinians as prisoners, and maybe President Bush not understand. We are waiting, for instance, for the fact-finding commission to come from the United Nations Security Council. Israel has been delaying them, and Israel is demanding that the world will see their story and their story only. And if they see otherwise the true story, they may be hunted, blackmailed, extorted.

What we need to see is the help from the international community to begin a process of rebuilding, reconstruction, healing, and that's what President Arafat needs now.

ZAHN: Mr. Erakat, we just have 10 seconds left. So you are saying that there is -- Yasser Arafat has no ability right now in this situation to control the violence? And I really got to cut you off in 10 seconds, because we are going to lose the satellite.

ERAKAT: All I am saying is now we need to have the Israelis to act in good faith in order to withdraw and to leave the siege and the closure. And then we'll take it from there to do whatever we can in accordance with our capabilities, Paula.

ZAHN: All right. We're going to have to leave it there this morning. Saeb Erakat, thank you for joining us as always on AMERICAN MORNING.

And we now are going to turn to the Israeli side, Dore Gold, foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He joins us from Jerusalem this morning -- welcome back, Ambassador Gold.

DORE GOLD, FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER TO ARIEL SHARON: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: All right. And, Mr. Gold, your reaction to some of what Mr. Erakat just described. I'm going to use his exact words. He said there is severe activity taking place in Ramallah, that the compound is being destroyed by Israeli troops, the presidential cars are being destroyed and that troops are now firing sound bombs in the complex. Is that true?

GOLD: Well, no. As Saeb Erakat said, he is not in Ramallah. He is Jericho. So I don't know how he can report on these things.

But I think the most important thing to understand is we need now to move forward. President Bush's proposals were very hard for Israel to accept. But the prime minister took a deep breath and passed those recommendations in the Israeli cabinet yesterday.

We are talking about terrorists who murdered a minister in the government of Israel. Imagine if somebody went into Washington and murdered a member of President Bush's cabinet, God forbid. Do you think the United States would let him out? So we are willing to take this compromise, put these people under American and British supervision. We have their Fouad Shobaki, the mastermind of Yasser Arafat's connections with Iraq and with Iran, the one who is responsible for that weapons ship, the Karine-A, which we intercepted in the Red Sea.

These are very serious people, very dangerous people, but if for the sake of U.S. interests, it's important for President Bush , who is a real friend of Israel, that we assume or we pick up his proposal. Well, we are willing to go forward with it.

ZAHN: Let's come back though to the first question I asked you. If you say that Saeb Erakat is in no position to describe what's going on at the compound because he is in Jericho many miles away, what exactly is going on militarily in the compound as both sides are waiting for this Bush proposal to come to pass here?

GOLD: Well, right now, we have to implement the proposal, which we agreed to, and afterwards apparently Mr. Arafat agreed to as well. So we will be implementing...

ZAHN: Is there anything militarily going on?

GOLD: ... it and then at that point...

ZAHN: Is there anything militarily going on at the compound?

GOLD: I know of no special military activity. I know of no special military activity there at present.

ZAHN: So are you suggesting Mr. Erakat made this all up this morning?

GOLD: No, but you know, he might have heard something, some people might have reported to him. Yasser Arafat -- excuse me -- Saeb Erakat also said on this network that we committed a massacre in Jenin in which 500 Palestinians were murdered. That's a total lie, and it was stated on CNN.

We know the numbers are very, very small.

I can tell you that in Jenin, we actually counted the number of buildings in the refugee camp. There are 1,896 buildings; 130 were affected in those combat operations. We know of over 50 buildings that were booby trapped with Palestinian explosives.

So many times what is presented on television as a dramatic disaster turns out to be something else when it's carefully examined.

ZAHN: Let's talk about the status of talks between Israel officials and the U.N. to get this fact-finding team in there. I know that your government has made it abundantly clear they don't think the existing team will be fair to Israel. Can you point to one specific example of evidence that you think this team would intentionally distort? GOLD: Well, first of all, you know, any time you -- I was a U.N. ambassador. Any time you send a U.N. team, an investigative team, a fact-finding team to any region in the world, it has to be guided by a mandate, terms of reference. What is it being sent for?

Now, if you have a team that's coming here and the terms of reference don't specifically state, we are here to find out what went on in Jenin, this could be an opening to all kinds of other U.N. activity that goes beyond our understanding of how the peace process is constructed. At Madrid back in 1991 and all of the peace agreements, we envisioned once the violence is over that there be a direct Israel-Palestinian negotiation, not U.N. intervention in this conflict. And therefore, issues like terms of reference, like the mandate, are very important and have to be very carefully drafted.

We also need people who have expertise, who can actually answer the question that was asked by the U.N. Security Council. What was the nature of the terrorist threat in Jenin? We are saying that Jenin was the fountainhead of suicide bombers. That's where they came out of. It was the factory of suicide bombers.

We are saying that dozens of buildings were booby trapped with Palestinian explosives. We are saying many of the Palestinian terrorists used Palestinians living there as human shields. That has to be examined by people with combat experience, people who know what it's like to deal with counterterrorist activity.

Finally, we are saying...

ZAHN: Mr. Gold?

GOLD: ... that we didn't -- yes.

ZAHN: Oh, sorry. I've just got 10 seconds left.

GOLD: Yes.

ZAHN: When will Mr. Arafat be free to travel?

GOLD: As soon as we finish the arrangements of implementing what we agreed to with President Bush's proposal. I am sure there will be no problem with Yasser Arafat traveling out of the compound.

ZAHN: Do you think that might happen today?

GOLD: Well, again, you're talking about a little bit of diplomatic contacts between us, the U.S., the Palestinians. It's just a matter of finishing off whatever preparatory work has to be done.

ZAHN: All right. Ambassador Dore Gold, thanks for your time today -- always good to have you on AMERICAN MORNING.

GOLD: It's my pleasure.

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