Barak: Arafat should be shunned as a rogue
By Janine Zacharia
WASHINGTON (July 20) - Likening Yasser Arafat to rogue leaders like Serbia's former president Slobodan Milosevic and repeatedly calling the Palestinian Authority chairman a liar, former prime minister Ehud Barak gave his first speech yesterday to an American audience since losing power. The event appeared aimed as much toward defending his own failed peacemaking efforts as paving the way for a possible political comeback.
Barak, who met yesterday with Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, called on world leaders to boycott Arafat and to deal with him as a rogue. "He should be held accountable for his behavior. He shouldn't be able to talk to leaders," Barak told The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Arafat lies whenever it serves him, Barak continued. "Most world leaders experienced it personally. I'm strongly convinced that it is about time to tell the truth."
While in the US, Barak, who has only recently re-emerged on the public stage, also gave a television interview with PBS's Charlie Rose and met privately with New York Times foreign affairs commentator Thomas Friedman, among others.
Barak renewed his calls for unilateral separation from the Palestinians - while always leaving open the door for fresh negotiations should a Palestinian leader emerge who is ready to make tough decisions and negotiate honestly - and endorsed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of focusing on individuals who are directing terror.
Barak criticized repeatedly what he described as a new revisionism post-Camp David, an apparent reference to articles published by former US negotiator Robert Malley.
Malley has written and spoken since leaving office in defense of Arafat, who he believes has been erroneously blamed for the collapse of the peace process into violence.
In his most recent piece, "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," published in the August 9 issue of The New York Review of Books, Malley criticizes Barak's negotiating style and explains Arafat's fears of being cornered and tricked by the Israeli leader.
"We never tried to dictate to him. Not me. Not President Clinton," Barak said, adding that the Israelis and Americans at Camp David never expected Arafat to do more than accept the ideas presented at the peacemaking summit as a basis for further negotiations.
Asked about what errors he believed he had made, Barak said they are "too few to mention."
According to Malley's latest account of the Camp David summit, Clinton, who publicly and privately blamed Arafat for its failure, was also frustrated by Barak's demands and negotiating style.
Malley says "Clinton was furious" around the time of the summit when Barak reneged on interim commitments, including the transfer of three Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of Jerusalem to the PA.
Clinton had conveyed the commitment to Arafat and felt Barak had made him out to be a "false prophet," Malley quoted the former president as saying.
Malley describes an "extraordinary moment at Camp David when Barak retracted some of his positions" and Clinton confronted him saying: "I can't go see Arafat with a retrenchment! You can sell it; there is no way I can.
This is not real. This is not serious."
Malley says too that Clinton had extracted a commitment from Barak to carry out the agreed-to third redeployment from the West Bank, whether or not a final peace deal was secured at Camp David. The redeployment, however, was never carried out.
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