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CNN Sunday Morning
More Mideast Violence Threatens Tenuous Cease-Fire
Aired June 24, 2001 - 09:08 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Turning now to the volatile situation in the Middle East. It's been another bloody weekend with Israeli and Palestinian casualties. It comes ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington for talks with President Bush.
CNN's Jerrold Kessel has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another challenge to the precariously-poised truce: a prominent Palestinian activist in the mainstream Fatah movement killed in the main square of Nablus in an explosion at a public telephone. 29-year-old Osama Joabari (ph) was on Israel's wanted list. Israeli authorities declined comment. Two small children were hurt in the blast and Fatah leaders immediately charge Israel with trying to end the cease-fire.
MARWAN BARGHOUTI, FATAH LEADER: The Israeli government pushed the situation for more escalation and more confrontations. And the Israeli government decided to open the hill (ph) on the Israeli commission (ph).
KESSEL: Even before the latest incident, concern voiced by the man who's international commission has laid out a program for ending hostilities and refocusing on peace talks.
GEORGE MITCHELL, FORMER U.S. SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: To create an international pressure from governments and non-government organizations around the world because this thing could easily spiral out of control in ways that cannot be foreseen or predicted.
KESSEL: As two Israeli soldiers killed by a suicide bomber in Gaza were buried, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says his self-proclaimed restraint policy might not be permanent.
ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: We are suffering casualties daily. The repeated murderous attacks and violations of the cease-fire by the Palestinian Authority has forced us to start to reassess the situation.
KESSEL: Mr. Sharon appealed to his audience, American Jewish leaders, to support his insistence that peace moves can only resume after all violence stops, and after a six-week testing period. Palestinian leaders are telling U.S. diplomats the cease-fire won't hold unless the clock on political actions starts ticking right away.
SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: We must see an expeditious timeline outlining the Israeli obligation and Israeli compliance with a freeze of settlement activities and resumption of permanent-status negotiations.
KESSEL: In Gaza, a rally of Islamic radicals after one of the top Islamic Jihad leaders declared his organization isn't bound by the U.S.-brokered cease-fire. He was questioned by Palestinian security over the weekend, and subsequently released.
Yasser Arafat, whom Israel is demanding arrest militants, met with top Israeli reporters at his West Bank headquarters.
"Haven't you heard," the Palestinian leader asked, "that we have arrested a number of groups and we continue to arrest them."
KESSEL (on camera): That's battle unfolding as Mr. Sharon prepares to meet President Bush at the White House on Tuesday. And then both sides prepare to receive Secretary of State Colin Powell. A battle over whether the cease-fire is taking hold and when they at last both oblige to undertake political moves as well.
Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, as Jerrold just told us, the Secretary of State Colin Powell will be heading to the middle east this week. Mr. Powell is hoping to keep the momentum going and shore up a tenuous cease-fire.
Joining me from New York to talk about his prospects, Richard Murphy. He is a former Assistant Secretary of State and a former U.S. Ambassador to Syria. Mr. Murphy, good to see you again, sir.
RICHARD MURPHY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: All right, this is an interesting trip for Mr. Powell. Initially his first trip to this region. He's going to be taking a little bit more about Iraq. Instead the focus has shifted. Is this a focus shift that he and the administration welcome?
MURPHY: I doubt very much it's one they welcome. They had hoped to have the focus kept on Iraq and he learned or he was told repeatedly in February there had to be more American attention paid to the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. And I think he's accepted that. If reluctantly he's accepted that -- that there's no way it's to be avoided and that he has to play a role.
O'BRIEN: You get the sense that the Bush administration, which at the outset indicated a desire to be less involved in the day to day machinations of trying to forge a peace process. He's sort of being dragged kicking screaming right into the center of this long running dispute. Now that they're there, what's the strategy?
MURPHY: Well, I think that Secretary Powell's visit can do two things. One is buy more time for the cease-fire. It's in it's 11th day now and the level of violence is clearly down. There's still some deaths. I think it's 11 or nine Palestinians, six Israelis in this timeframe but it has clearly fallen.
And the second purpose of his trip is to give assurance and get ideas from others in the area from the Egyptians, the Jordanians. I believe he may meet with Crowned Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to show them we are trying. And even if early progress is not going to be perhaps as dramatic as they might like, we're not turning our backs on it as a country.
O'BRIEN: I guess the Bush administration has learned this is just a situation, which cannot be ignored. I guess the other question would be then, the Clinton administration was involved so intricately in this process. Do you see the Bush administration heading to that level of a broker status?
MURPHY: Not at all in terms of the president's role. I think it will be Secretary Powell directing the work of William Burns, the assistant secretary designate for the job -- the special envoy out there now. The feeling in Washington, as I understand it, is still despite this enormous investment of President Clinton personally and his administration, it didn't result in success so why go down the same road?
O'BRIEN: Do you get the sense that right now both sides are willing, interested in talking to each other?
MURPHY: I'll put it his way, I don't think either side is interested in being responsible or accused of responsibility for breaking the cease-fire. And each one is a prisoner of pressures from his own community to do just that. Both Sharon and Arafat have pressures from the Israeli and Palestinian community to go out and create violence.
O'BRIEN: Ambassador Murphy, thank you very much as always. Richard Murphy is a former Assistant Secretary of State, former Ambassador to Syria. Thanks for being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
MURPHY: Thank you.
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