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CNN Live Today

Arafat Speaks Before Council

Aired September 09, 2002 - 13:09   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Yasser Arafat has given a speech today that is being dissected in some detail.
With that story, CNN's Jerrold Kessel once again from Jerusalem -- Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, the Palestinians, some Palestinian leaders anyway, are calling this landmark speech by Yasser Arafat, but many Israeli leaders are saying it really doesn't spell a major difference and certainly doesn't turn a corner in this ongoing confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Certainly it was seen -- there were some extraordinary things that Yasser Arafat said, some less extraordinary things. But it was an extraordinary meeting and extraordinary circumstances.

The council meeting for the first time in two years, with sand bags on their windows, a makeshift -- a premises for the makeshift parliament. Many of the legislators, a dozen in fact, prevented from coming by Israel, security cited as the reason, from Gaza to West Bank.

But Yasser Arafat was smiling as he came in, and as he addressed the legislative council. He told the parliament that peace was very much a Palestinian interest, and he told Israelis, too, that he believed the time was now get back to negotiating table and make peace. And you could say in a sense, after the two years of conflict and confrontation that, in a way, is an exceptional statement.

But not quite so exceptional what Yasser Arafat had to say about ending violence now. Some had hoped would he call for immediate and total cease-fire. That were rudely awakened to the fact he was not doing that. He spoke very firmly against suicide bombings, against terror attacks on civilians, but he said also there must a distinction drawn between terror attacks and appropriate responses to the ongoing Israeli occupation.

He certainly wasn't anywhere as forceful as his own security chief General Alekhi (ph), the minister of the interior, has been speaking out very forcefully about the need to get a total cease-fire in place as soon as possible.

And what may be exceptional was the fact that Yasser Arafat, although he did say it with a smile, said he was perhaps ready to give up executive powers if that's what the Palestinian legislative council wanted of him. He said really with a smile, I ask do you that so that I can take a rest. But by and large, you could say that what he had to say today, particularly on the question of violence, even though as I say he was condemning attacks on civilians, and particularly suicide bombers, was not exactly music either to American or Israeli ears. But given the fact the searing reality for most Palestinian on the streets of the Palestinian towns are the fact that there are Israeli tanks there, there is the Israeli reoccupation of many of the Palestinian towns, that if Yasser Arafat went only as far as he could, it's because he possibly couldn't go any further if he is to remain in tune with the consistency, the Palestinian people -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Jerrold Kessel from Jerusalem, thank you.

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