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American Morning

Powell To Brief President this Morning

Aired April 18, 2002 - 08:14   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: In just a couple of hours, Secretary of State Colin Powell will brief the president on his Middle East mission and the White House says the trip established a clear vision of peace. But despite his best efforts, Powell's shuttle diplomacy failed to win a cease-fire.

President Bush said yesterday all parties in the Middle East need to do their part for peace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Palestinian Authority must act, must act on its words of condemnation against terror. Israel must continue its withdrawals. And all Arab states must step up to their responsibilities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: The question now is where does the White House go from here?

Joining us from Washington, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Welcome back. Good to see you again.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Good morning.

ZAHN: Good morning.

Let's talk a little bit about any progress you think Secretary of State Powell made, the president saying he did make some progress. Almost everybody acknowledging that he helped decrease tensions along that northern border of Israel. But then you have Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat saying, "The situation is worse than when he came."

What do you think?

BRZEZINSKI: I can put it in a nutshell -- no strategy, no success. It's very difficult to divine what the administration's strategy is. It seems to buy a little bit of the Palestinian view that there is the need for political settlement. It seems to be buying the Israeli view that the issue is terror. And it's not concentrating on getting a settlement, because by now it should be quiet evident to everyone that the Israelis and the Palestinians left to themselves will not reach peace.

ZAHN: So what would you have done?

BRZEZINSKI: So no strategy, no success.

ZAHN: What would have been your strategy?

BRZEZINSKI: What I would have, it would be to put on the table before the parties a detailed American concept of what a fair, viable, secure settlement would entail, what kind of assurances and guarantees would follow, obtain European, U.N., Russian support for it and thereby set in motion a process by which the parties themselves would then have to respond to a proposal backed by the United States, backed by the international community.

ZAHN: But isn't that what the Tenet and Mitchell plans were expressly written to do?

BRZEZINSKI: Certainly not. Certainly not. These are essentially procedural, tactical plans involving cease-fires, interim arrangements, confidence building measures during which time each side does things to violate the process. The Palestinians engage in periodic acts of terrorism. The Israelis build up settlements and retaliate against the terrorism by dismantling the Palestinian Authority and the situation, as we have seen, has gotten steadily worse.

ZAHN: Well, let me ask you about this. There was a stinging editorial in the "Wall Street Journal" suggesting that the president was putting Secretary of State Powell in an impossible situation. And the editorial said basically that Presidents Reagan and Nixon never put a secretary of state in Powell's position. And here is the quote. "Unless both sides were already prepared to deal."

Do you think Secretary Powell is used as a sacrificial lamb here?

BRZEZINSKI: You know, I really can't speculate. But I do have a sense that within the administration there are serious differences. There is no strategic consensus. The president is preoccupied with one issue, which he defines essentially with one word, terrorism. And as a consequence, there is no sense of engagement or seriousness about the American involvement in the Middle Eastern problem.

We have been passive for a year. The tragedy that has developed could have been avoided by earlier engagement. It could have been stopped by decisive insistence, and the United States has a lot of leverage. Instead, the president says must this, must that. The parties ignore him and nothing happens.

ZAHN: But if, in fact, the Israelis had listened to him immediately, wouldn't that have clearly been a violation of the Bush doctrine, not allowing Israel to defend itself in the face of what they call terrorist attacks?

BRZEZINSKI: Well, there is always a question of proportionality. If you look at what happened in Jenin, is that defense or is that aggression? Is that brutality? Does that contribute to the escalation of hostility? Yes, when there are terrorist acts a response is necessary and justified. But terrorist acts should be punished by attacking the terrorists, not by deliberately dismantling the Palestinian Authority, which was created as part of the Oslo peace process, preparatory to an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Mr. Sharon has always been against it and he is the only one here who has a strategy. He would like basically to destroy the Palestinian Authority and the United States has been acquiescing.

ZAHN: So before we let you go, there is talk of an international peace conference. The prime minister of Israel very much pushing that. It's not clear exactly what the administration's temperature is on it at the moment. Is that a start, in your judgment?

BRZEZINSKI: It could be a start if particularly the outside parties, and notably the United States, which has a decisive influence here, is prepared to step up with a strategic concept of its own and put on the table something that becomes the international community's definition of a just and viable solution.

I repeat, the parties themselves will never agree to it. Arafat's concept of peace is very different from Sharon's. Each will delay, each will undermine the process, each will accuse the other, each will contribute to the escalation of the violence. And we have seen this happen just within the last few weeks and how many more times do we want to see it happen and what will be the consequences of it happening again to our war on terrorism, to our position in the region, even to our own moral standing?

ZAHN: And on that note, we're going to have to leave it there this morning.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, always good to have your insights. Thank you very much for your time this morning.

BRZEZINSKI: Nice to talk to you.

ZAHN: Thanks.

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