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CNN Saturday Morning News

Will Powell Meet With Arafat?

Aired April 13, 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk about Secretary Powell's peace mission and whether he'll meet with Yasser Arafat. Ongoing discussion this morning. We're going to check with CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel. She's traveling with Secretary Powell in Jerusalem.

Andrea, good to see you again. A lot of competing pressures, no doubt, on Secretary Powell.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you too, Kyra. Yes, that's true. Even before Secretary Powell arrived here, not only were the stakes very high, but expectations were low. He had heard from a variety of meetings with Arab leaders. Before he arrived here, he was in Egypt, he was in Morocco, and he was in Jordan.

And all of them said we're not going to use the clout that we have and the influence that we have with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat until you do the following. They said Secretary Powell has to meet with Yasser Arafat to show that the Israeli attempt to isolate him wasn't working, and that the secretary of state had to convince the Israelis to completely withdraw or at least show that they were moving rapidly out of the West Bank towns and cities.

On the other hand, especially following yesterday's suicide attack here in Jerusalem, you have tremendous pressure from the Israeli government on Secretary Powell to get Yasser Arafat not only to publicly condemn the suicide attack -- this was carried out ostensibly by a Palestinian young woman -- but you also have to get Yasser Arafat to reign in the militants. He has as yet to publicly speak out in Arabic in recent weeks and tell the Palestinian people that they should stop suicide attacks against the Israelis.

But at the same time, in the middle you have Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian people, who have been under siege for now going on 15 days. And so, it's a very difficult situation for the secretary of state to try to mediate and to try to navigate, and right now you have a standoff because of the latest demand before a meeting with Yasser Arafat can go forward is for him to speak out and condemn yesterday's attack, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Andrea, also another note. I'm sorry, I had someone talking to me there. I caught the last part of what you said, but I wanted to touch also on something you mentioned the last time we spoke with you. The Norwegian donor conference. How does that play? How does that have significance here?

KOPPEL: Right. Well, this is something Secretary Powell actually just out of the blue mentioned. We heard not only with Secretary Powell in the Middle East this past week, but he was also in Madrid, in Spain. And there, he met with the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, with the head of the European Union and with the Russian foreign minister. And it was during that meeting that they had discussed the possibility of having a donor's conference, but that was pretty much the end of it.

It's something that the Arab world has asked the United States to try to spearhead and that the Palestinians have also asked, because in the last 15 days Palestinian infrastructure -- not only we're talking about homes and roads and buildings, but we're also talking about the very structure of the Palestinian Authority, their computers, their -- everything that would go into their office has been absolutely obliterated.

And in order to give people hope and in order to try to stem this flood of suicide attacks and the feeling of despair, the international community said, look, we need to try to raise some money. We need to try to try to sort of lay out the path road to the way out of this desperate situation. And so there is, again out of the blue, Secretary Powell said that the Norwegian government had agreed to hold a donor's conference some time later this month, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Andrea Koppel, traveling with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Thank you very much.

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