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CNN Saturday Morning News

Powell Postpones Meeting With Arafat

Aired April 13, 2002 - 07:30   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All right, back now to the crisis in the Middle East, Colin Powell's difficult pursuit of peace.

Our Andrea Koppel is traveling with the secretary of state. She joins us now live from Jerusalem -- Andrea, what's the latest?

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, this was sort of the day that Secretary Powell's aides had to scramble to put together because, as you know, the secretary was supposed to be meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today but then following Friday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem, that meeting was put on hold for at least 24 hours.

Secretary Powell, through the president's special Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, sent a message to Yasser Arafat that before this meeting can go forward, the Palestinian leader must unequivocally condemn the bombing publicly, something he has as yet to do.

In fact, right now we are told that one of the Palestinian chief negotiators, Saeb Erakat, is either in Ramallah or on his way there to meet with the Palestinian leader to convey this message.

The Palestinians, for their part, have been calling on the United States and the Israeli government to get the Israelis to completely withdraw all of their troops which have besieged the Palestinian people now for 15 days.

Earlier today with that in mind, Secretary Powell held two previously unscheduled meetings with members of the humanitarian community, the Red Cross as well as the United Nations Relief Works agency and publicly said that the United States is deeply concerned about the serious humanitarian situation in the territories and said that the Israeli forces must exercise the utmost restraint.

There have been accusations made by the international community as well as the Palestinians that Israeli military forces have blocked humanitarian assistance from getting into various besieged areas in the West Bank, that the humanitarian relief has not been able to get to folks there, that they haven't been able to get relief, they haven't been able to get aide to people who have been under Israeli guard now for 15 days.

In addition, Secretary Powell said the president had signed an additional $30 million worth of relief aid for humanitarian workers and said that there would be now a Norwegian international donors meeting that would be convened some time later this month.

This is something, Miles, that the Palestinians, in addition to the Arab world, have been calling for because the West Bank has been, and the Palestinian Authority, for that matter, has been really destroyed over the last 15 days. There is no water. There is no electricity. Infrastructure has been destroyed and that is something that Secretary Powell has been hearing for the last week as he met with leaders from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from Morocco as well as from Jordan -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Andrea Koppel in Jerusalem, thank you very much.

For more perspective on Colin Powell's mission to the Middle East, we turn now to two people who know the area and know the issues well.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us from Washington are former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, and Mark Perry, a long time Mideast analyst and author of "A Fire In Zion." Good morning, gentlemen.

MARC GINSBERG, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO MOROCCO: Good morning.

MARK PERRY, AUTHOR, "A FIRE IN ZION": Good morning.

PHILLIPS: Already a number of e-mails coming in. Should we get right to them?

O'BRIEN: No, not just yet. They're not ready.

PHILLIPS: Oh, they're not ready?

O'BRIEN: I'm not quite ready to put them on the screen.

PHILLIPS: Oh, OK.

O'BRIEN: So let me just ask you a question, gentlemen. The likelihood of Powell meeting with Arafat seems pretty slim right now. I don't anticipate Mr. Arafat is going to be Israeli government any striking condemnations of terrorism any time special operation, do you?

GINSBERG: Well, Miles, I frankly am a bit concerned that we've place so much emphasis on whether or not the Powell mission is going to succeed or fail and whether or not there's a photo-op with Mr. Arafat. He has, Mr. Arafat already refused to honor the request of the president of the United States when Vice President Cheney came to the region. There was no agreement to meet then because he refused to issue that condemnation. And, frankly, even if he issues that condemnation, I'm not sure that that's going to stop the violence.

I do think that the reason for meeting, that the meeting should take place is very simple. Mr. Powell has to look in Mr. Arafat's eyes and come to his own conclusion over whether or not Mr. Arafat is prepared to do anything constructive towards negotiating any agreement. He can leave that meeting and come to his own conclusions, but to dangle a meeting out there, I think, is now counterproductive.

O'BRIEN: All right, we do have the e-mails ready now. Let's get to one right away. "The question is not so much what are the benefits of Powell meeting with Arafat," says this correspondent, "but rather what damage we may cause by not meeting with Arafat. The Arab world has said deal with Arafat, he is the elected president, you cannot broker peace speaking to one side and it is unfair to play favorites. Primarily, we do not know the consequences of not meeting."

That's from D. Young in Knoxville. Good question.

Mark Perry?

PERRY: Well, I think that Secretary Powell has to meet with Yasser Arafat. I hope that he does. I hope that Mr. Arafat does condemn the bombing yesterday. He has previously and I think it would be a great idea for him to do so.

It's very clear that a lot rests on the Powell mission. Secretary Powell can't be seen as being held hostage by terrorism or by violence. We have a peace process to engage in. The situation in the Middle East is very, very delicate. Your viewer is correct, Mr. Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinian people. There are two sides to this conflict and I think Mr. Powell has to be seen as being even-handed.

PHILLIPS: And Marc Ginsberg, there's also the concern about U.S. credibility among other Arab leaders and nations, correct?

GINSBERG: If we are going to preposition a reasonable compromise between the parties, then one of the most important mistakes that we've made in the previous administration was not gaining the support of moderate Arab states behind a reasonable proposal that, in effect, makes it virtually impossible for the Palestinian leadership to deny that it's not a reasonable settlement for the Arabs and for the Palestinians themselves.

And that's why I believe that we have to remove from the equation those impediments that make it impossible for us to put the burden back where it belongs, on the president of Egypt, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the king of Jordan and the king of Morocco to help the United States with the European Union to resurrect a process that is going to not be incremental and not let Mr. Arafat serve as a veto authority over it.

I think the most important thing that we have to do here is to remove from Mr. Arafat the final authority over a political settlement with the Israelis because the Israelis don't consider him a trustworthy peace partner and frankly the United States does not either.

So under those circumstances, it's our allies in the Middle East who offer our best hope to help negotiate a reasonable peace process.

O'BRIEN: Here's another question. "Why does Secretary of State Powell single-handedly clear that he is determined to go for peace, meet with Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon, any time, anywhere, no matter how long it takes, until he can make these two men agree to peace?" sort of, I guess, the Camp David philosophy, Mark Perry, just go for broke and talk no matter what.

PERRY: Well, there's a lot at stake here in and general I would agree with that and I hope Secretary Powell does it. But I think the implication of the question is that the United States should impose a peace agreement on the Israelis and Palestinians. What that means virtually, however, is that a peace settlement would be imposed on the Israelis, and we cannot do that. There's no political future in doing that for any leader here in the United States.

Our job is to bring the two sides together, to mediate this conflict. I hope Secretary Powell, as your viewer says, stays in the region for as long as it takes. But we can't be seen as imposing a solution. That won't work.

PHILLIPS: This question from Canada. Ed wants to know, "Isn't it more likely that Ariel Sharon secretly canceled the Powell-Arafat meeting as punishment for the recent suicide bombing and that the Bush administration is saying they themselves have postponed it to publicly save face?"

Now, Marc Ginsberg, you might want to comment on that. But just about less than half an hour ago I interviewed Gideon Meir and he said that Israel put no pressure on Powell not to meet Arafat. Conflicting reports.

GINSBERG: Well, the prime minister of Israel declared before Mr. Powell arrived in the region that he considered a meeting between the secretary of state and Chairman Arafat to be "a tragic mistake." I think the Israelis may have made it abundantly clear to the United States that they do not consider Mr. Arafat to be a trustworthy peace partner.

He has clearly earned all of their distrust over recent months and frankly it makes it very difficult for the Israelis to justify having the United States put him back in the middle. But I come down to a fundamental fact that nevertheless is paradoxical. Mr. Arafat remains the elected leader of the Palestinian people and he is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Even if that room has only candlelight and no electricity or running water.

He has to be placed into a position of finally declaring once and for all his position towards negotiating with the Israelis and for the Palestinians to keep insisting that he has already condemned terrorist attacks, they keep pointing to these other facts of the "New York Times" articles and editorials, that's past. We have to start looking at the future. He either lives up to his bargain that he negotiated with Mr. Rabin at Oslo or he becomes the Milosevic of the Middle East and is someone who has to be ostracized eventually where others are able to take his place.

But for the time being, he has to be dealt with one way or the other. O'BRIEN: All right, well here's -- we've been talking an awful lot about Mr. Arafat. This question relates to Mr. Sharon, as well. Turley Hayes in Topeka, Kansas offers this. "I cannot understand Bush's stance on Israel and the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon is just as much a terrorist as Arafat. Quite frankly, no peace will ever come to that area until he and Arafat are replaced."

Mark Perry?

PERRY: There's a lot of, there's actually a lot of sentiment in the Middle East for that point of view. Your viewer has tapped into that. I would like to add, Ambassador Ginsberg is right about the mistrust from the Bush administration towards Arafat. What has happened in the last 48 hours is we've seen an emerging mistrust of Ariel Sharon and I'm sure the meeting yesterday between Secretary Powell and Mr. Sharon was very difficult, very tough, very strong words from the secretary of state. I think you could read that on the face of Ariel Sharon.

I don't want to read too much into it, but I think it's very true, the administration is very hesitant now with these two very strong-willed political leaders to try and mediate between them and perhaps it will take the passing from the scene of both of them for us to reach peace in the region.

GINSBERG: Miles, can I jump in here?

O'BRIEN: Yes, go ahead.

GINSBERG: I have to reject the implication that somehow the prime minister of Israel is a terrorist. It's clear that the Israelis have sufficient evidence here that they have been prepared to share with the Western media and with the United States government that Mr. Arafat has been directly involved in helping to finance and supervise terrorist activities against civilians. What Mr. Sharon is doing, he is defending the Israeli people against these attacks and while there have been clearly humanitarian crises that has occurred in the West Bank, and as I have always believed, the Palestinians deserve to be treated far more humanely than the Israelis have, I cannot agree with the implication of that statement.

O'BRIEN: Well, but let me, let's get away from the semantics of terrorist here for just a moment, and if I were to rephrase this viewer's question without his permission here, if you look at Sharon and Arafat, you have two people who have built their careers as warriors and in the absence of war, what does that leave them? Does that make them irrelevant?

So I guess perhaps the question might be are these the right people ever to come to the peace table?

GINSBERG: I don't think they both are, frankly. I think that Mr. Sharon has not offered either the Israeli public, much less the Palestinian people, a true vision for peace. I'm not certain what Mr. Sharon's policies are vis-a-vis the West Bank. I'm not sure that he is prepared to pull back. He has never really supported the Oslo process. He's not offered the Palestinian people any hope and the Israeli public recognizes that. He won't deal with the issues that are the most fundamental issues.

Now, for the same token, you can say the same thing about Arafat. So I frankly think that we have two leaders who are clearly engaged in a blood feud but we're going to have to try to work around it, which is why I'm in favor of a process where we, in effect, the United States rearticulates a peace process that neither man is willing to do themselves.

O'BRIEN: Mark Perry, can you agree with any of that?

PERRY: Yes, I agree with almost all of it. I think that that's why Secretary Powell is in the region, to offer what Mr. Sharon calls a political horizon but what Mr. Sharon has not provided. That's why it's vitally important that Secretary Powell not be stopped from seeing Mr. Arafat. That's why this peace process should not be held hostage to terrorist acts. That's why it must go forward. I hope that happens either today or tomorrow.

O'BRIEN: Mssrs. Ginsberg and Perry, thank you very much. Don't go too far, though. We'll buy you a cup of coffee while we give you a little break.

PHILLIPS: Many more e-mails.

O'BRIEN: And then we've got a lot more e-mails, a lot more questions for you in just a little bit.

PERRY: Sure.

GINSBERG: Sure.

PHILLIPS: Thanks, guys.

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