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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview with Wayne Owens

Aired March 31, 2002 - 09:24   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: We're going to get right back to the e-mails. Bring in Wayne Owens again of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. He joins us be telephone. We appreciate you sticking with us this morning, Wayne.

WAYNE OWENS, CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE AND ECONOMIC COOPERATION: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: This one coming from Shabbir. I hope I'm saying that name properly.

"If President Bush thinks Arafat has control and should be held responsible for the acts of others does that mean that President Bush and our intelligence agencies should be held responsible for terrorist acts of Oklahoma and the World Trade Center?"

OWENS: Well, of course, the answer -- a simplistic answer is no. and that begs the question -- President Bush and the leaders of the administration -- Dick Cheney and Colin Powell -- they are periodically in different minds.

It's clear that there's some ambiguity in signals. You had Dick Cheney returning from a 10 day trip through 10 Arab countries becoming convinced -- and I think it was on CNN a week ago today. I heard him say explicitly, "It cannot be stopped, it cannot be solved without the United States. And we are engaged and we are going forward." and he made strong commitments that the United States was going to be engaged.

And then, of course, on Friday night the United States voted for the UN resolution, which called on Israel to withdraw from the west -- from the Palestinian areas including Ramallah.

The uncertain signal given by President Bush came I think as a genuine, heartfelt interest in trying to reassure the Israelis that the United States stands by its closest ally in the Middle East -- very appropriately so.

And Colin Powell in his press conference on Friday was trying to do the same thing. But I believe the United States understands, as Dick Cheney said, "They can't solve it without us."

And I hope and believe that the United States is basically coming to that activist position. There's a certain sense that we do want to be of help and supportive of Israel. At the same time I think the United States understands it's going to have to get involved and there are two sides to some of these issues and it will not be resolved -- in fact, can't be controlled without strong, affirmative American action.

O'BRIEN: All right, Mr. Owens, let's take one more e-mail. This one comes from Stu Perlmutter (ph) in Bel Aire Bluffs, Florida.

"It is obvious that taking out Arafat is not going to do anything other than inflame the current untenable situation. However, if the Mossad is as good as they seem to be, the surgical elimination of the leaders of the Hamas and the Al Aksa brigades would cut the head off of a multi-headed snake."

Your thoughts on that, Mr. Owens?

OWENS: Well, if the Mossad or Israel, either by design or by accident killed Yasser Arafat -- the word hell has been over used dramatically in recent days but it would be a whole new phase of hell.

And the Palestinians as much as over the years they like him and then they don't like him and they distrust him and then they do trust him -- right now he's very, high. But in any case over the years he is the continuing icon and the only leader they have.

And if, in fact, he is killed in this incursion -- in this imprisonment basically that you have now in Ramallah . . .

O'BRIEN: Mr. Owens?

OWENS: . . . it would be a terrible problem.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Owens, I'm sorry -- maybe I didn't read it clearly. The question was -- he's agreeing with you that that's probably not the way to go but what about the Mossad targeting the leaders of Hamas and Al Aksa -- in other words, these very militant groups?

OWENS: Well, I think that we've been -- that America has been, again, of two minds on the issue over recent months. There's been strong support officially from the administration on these targeted eliminations that Israel has undertaken but a very strong feeling at the working level that they are causing problems more than they are solving them.

So the two -- the sense of two different feelings in this dichotomy of beliefs and feelings within the administration has been very real in that regard.

O'BRIEN: Wayne Owens, stay with us -- stay close to the phone. We'll be back with you shortly.

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