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CNN Live Today

Arafat Residence Siege in Tense Negotiations

Aired May 01, 2002 - 10:03   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Up first this hour on CNN, we are watching the Middle East very closely for a number of possible developments.

At the top of that list, U.S. and British efforts to end the siege in Ramallah, and that is where our Matthew Chance is standing by live to bring us up to date.

Matthew, does it appear there is a deal to end the siege?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, in fact, Daryn, we have had it confirmed from both Palestinian officials and their Israeli counterparts that indeed a deal has been done to place the six wanted Palestinians currently holed up alongside Yasser Arafat under international custody to transfer them under international supervision into a Palestinian jail in the West Bank town of Jericho, so that they can live out their sentences.

Remember, a makeshift Palestinian court last week sentenced four of those six wanted men between 1 and 18 years imprisonment for killing Israel's tourism minister last October. The time line we have been given for this transfer to take place, as you have been reporting, is about now. Two hours ago, we got a Palestinian official saying it's going to be two hours from now. So this is the time where I am anticipating, we are expecting the transfer to take place.

I can tell you though, Daryn, that it is not taking place at this stage. Let me just step out of the way, so you can see the scene, and I can give you a picture of the lay of the land right here. Right over there in the center of the frame, that's Yasser Arafat's compound, around it a tight Israeli security cordon. This is as close to that compound as we have managed to be able to come today.

The building in the middle with the three water tanks on the top of the roof -- well, let me just navigate you through this. That building next to that is a building with a steel corrugated roof. It is the building on the immediate right of that where we believe Yasser Arafat has been sitting. That building where we believe that the meetings have been under way and are now finished between Palestinian officials and security experts of Britain and the United States. We witnessed their vehicles leaving the compound earlier.

Israel has made pains to make sure that once it gives the order for its troops to leave this compound, where of course, they have been placing the Palestinian leader under siege since the end of March, once they leave, those six wanted Palestinians will not be permitted to simply walk free.

The Palestinians for their part have their own concerns, particularly about the safety of those men. Once they are transferred to international responsibility, they have been seeking a letter of guarantee from the U.S. and British team to make sure they don't come into harm or don't get transferred at any stage into the custody of the Israeli Security Force.

Now, what we are waiting for here is the arrival of some kind of British or American car, which the Palestinians say they have negotiated to take these six wanted men, to transfer them under international custody to the Palestinian prison facility in Jericho. When that convoy begins, they will be coming down this road you can see here, making a left turn at the bottom and hopefully driving right past us here along this road toward Faith Hill (ph), an Israeli Jewish settlement, a short distance from here and make their way to Jericho.

So we are in a good vantage point for this position, Daryn, to bring you that convoy leaving and the imminent and the soon after, we are told, the withdrawal of Israeli forces to you live.

KAGAN: All right, Matthew, a couple of questions here. First of all, this prison that the Palestinians would be going to in Jericho, this is an existing facility already, and they would be kept in a special part of the prison? How is this going to work?

CHANCE: This is a prison in Jericho that was built by the British back in the 1930s during their period of mandate in what was then, of course, the land of Palestine. And so it is a prison facility that has already been existing. The Palestinians tell us they gave the Israelis two options, or rather gave the British and U.S. experts two options, either this prison or a prison facility in Gaza.

Part of the problem from the Palestinian point of view is, of course, over the successive months of Israeli attacks on the installations of the Palestinian Authority. One of the things that have been destroyed, Palestinian police stations and the prisons attached to them. So they don't have many of these facilities left. This one has been agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians. It was the main negotiating issue between the two sides.

KAGAN: And then quickly on Yasser Arafat, he is going to be allowed to move between a few towns in the West Bank. But to say that he is completely free, that's not an accurate description, is it?

CHANCE: You know, it's not exactly clear what the parameters will be on his ability to move around. We have been told that it is expected that he will be given free access to areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under Palestinian control. It has not been made clear to us yet though whether he will be permitted to travel outside of the Palestinian territories to visit other countries in the Arab world, in Europe, although of course Palestinian officials have indicated that eventually, after spending some time in those Palestinian areas, that would be what Yasser Arafat would want to do.

So we will have to see what exact controls, what limitations are placed on Yasser Arafat's movements, once this siege has come to an end -- Daryn.

KAGAN: All right. Matthew Chance in Ramallah, we will checking back with you throughout the morning for any developments there.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: For the Israel perspective on developments in Ramallah, let's go now to CNN's Jerrold Kessel.

He joins us now live from Jerusalem -- Jerrold, good morning.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

Well, the Israelis will be watching very carefully not only how this plays out in the sense of when Yasser Arafat comes out and more or less what he does. And the assessment of how he has come out of this month-long siege, the isolation that he was put under by Prime Minister Sharon, really the four-month siege in Ramallah.

Let's not forget he was not allowed to leave the Ramallah area for the past four months as this battle intensified, and of course, that intensifying in the last month when he was pinned up in that battered headquarters of his.

The big question is: Does Mr. Arafat come out the loser or winner out of this? And my guess that the general assumption will be a general assessment of will be bit of both, because he certainly has survived Ariel Sharon's pressure on him.

And on the other hand, he now has to, in a sense, deliver, because he emerges quite clearly with his popularity very high with the Palestinian people. There is a great deal of adulation. But will that adulation last when he has to meet with what President Bush has been demanding of him? That he earn his trust. In other words, Yasser Arafat will have to demonstrate pretty quickly, at least to the United States and more even to Israel, that he doesn't only talk about controlling terror, but will act in that direction.

Now, as far as the Israelis are concerned, they don't really expect very much of him. But the key question will be: Will he satisfy, and as President Bush said, earn his trust? That's the big focus and also the focus of what Mr. Arafat will do. Will he travel to Jenin? Will he address his people about, for instance, the Saudi peace initiative? Will he be traveling, and how quickly and to where? Those are the key questions.

One place he won't be going, of course, for anytime soon, it seems, to Washington, whereas Ariel Sharon is headed there at the beginning of next week to talk to President Bush, and to talk -- it is said they will be talking about trying to come to strategic understanding of where to go next -- Leon.

HARRIS: Well, Jerrold, what then are the signals that you are seeing and hearing right now about the Israeli policy of these incursions? If Yasser Arafat is going to be released from his compound, is there also going to be any change as well as far as that policy goes with the incursions?

KESSEL; That's a very interesting question. Up until now, we have really had Mr. Sharon playing according to his own timetable, acting according to his own agenda of this ongoing, as he has put it, battle against terror. Of course, the Israelis say they have wound up that phase of the major offensive, went to the big Palestinian towns, it culminated, you could say, in the last few days with that big offensive into Palestinian Hebron.

Jericho, the place to which those six wanted men are going, is the only real Palestinian town on the West Bank and only sizable population center where the Israelis didn't go into in their search for terror suspects.

Now, whether they will continue to go on doing that, I rather suspect they will if they believe they really are going after people who they are on their wanted list or whom they think they need to be ferreting out before they can engage in the nefarious acts against them.

But the big question is: How soon they will be -- Mr. Bush and the United States, together with the Saudis, perhaps are able to put in train measures that can lead down into a political vein, which in other words would stop those kinds of Israeli security actions. That is the question now in the days and weeks ahead -- Leon.

HARRIS: Exactly. And we will be looking for the answers here -- Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem. We'll also be watching closely, that compound in Ramallah to see if and when Yasser Arafat is going to be coming outside.

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