The US is not cutting ties with Arafat. Drats. Arafat get his 1003rd last chance. Everyone knows his chance of taking it is exactly zero, considering that he is so far gone that he will actually regard this as a big win. He has survived another day. And that's all he cares about.
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Bush: U.S. Won't Cut Off Arafat
PLO Chief Is Urged Anew to Fight Terror
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 2, 2002; Page A01
President Bush assured Jordan's King Abdullah II yesterday that the administration does not plan to sever contacts with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but told him the United States will not renew direct efforts to broker Mideast peace until Arafat takes concrete steps against terrorism, sources familiar with the talks said.
Bush made no effort to soft-pedal his "disappointment" with Arafat and emphasized that he holds the PLO chairman responsible for failing to "step up and fight terror," according to a White House aide who briefed reporters.
Neither side in yesterday's talks claimed the overall impasse in the peace negotiations was close to being resolved. In the meeting, Abdullah acknowledged Bush's belief that he had been lied to and betrayed by Arafat. But sources said the Jordanian left confident that the immediate crisis over disengagement with Arafat had been averted.
The 90-minute, early morning Oval Office session appeared likely, for the moment at least, to calm escalating tensions between the United States and its principal allies in the Arab world. Over the past two weeks, Abdullah held talks with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and met with senior Egyptian officials. Officials in Amman said the king would speak for all of them in communicating to Bush their concern that U.S. disengagement from Arafat would throw the region into even greater turmoil.
The Arabs have not gone out of their way to defend Arafat in recent weeks, but have said that his absence as the main Palestinian interlocutor would create an extremely dangerous political vacuum. At the same time, they have sought to call attention to the suffering Israeli military and economic actions have caused Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza during the armed uprising that began 16 months ago, and called on Washington to apply an even hand in dealing with both sides.
During yesterday's meeting, Bush and Abdullah "shared their concerns about the increasing violence and terror in the region, and also about the worsening plight of Palestinian people," the White House aide said.
Late last night, there were reports that Israeli helicopters had fired missiles at a Palestinian naval headquarters in Gaza. Earlier, the Israeli army said Palestinians fired at several Israeli military posts in Gaza and launched mortars at a position near the crossing with Israel.
Such exchanges have become common, along with repeated terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers, the most recent of which occurred Sunday in Jerusalem.
Arafat, said an administration official, has failed to recognize the extent to which terrorism has become "the backdrop for all of our foreign policy initiatives since September 11." He has failed to move forcefully against militant groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for many of the attacks against civilians and has been designated an international terrorist organization by the administration. "Arafat needs to understand the new world we live in," the official said.
The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks ended more than a month ago, when special envoy Anthony C. Zinni came back to Washington. His scheduled return to the region was put off while the administration reviewed its policy after an increase in terrorist attacks. Officials said Bush made no commitment to Abdullah on Zinni's possible return, and made it clear that nothing would happen without additional action from Arafat.
The administration's frustration with Arafat's inability or unwillingness to dismantle the militant groups and arrest their leaders boiled over last month after Israeli commandos seized a ship carrying 50 tons of weapons in the Red Sea. U.S. and Israeli officials said the ship was on its way to the Palestinians from Iran, believed to be one of Hamas's principal backers. The White House was particularly exasperated by a letter to Bush in which Arafat said he knew nothing about the shipment, officials said.
At a photo opportunity with the king, Bush told reporters, "I thought we were making pretty good progress up until the time when we discovered, the world discovered, that there had been a significant shipment of arms over from Iran for what seemed like to us only one purpose, and that is for terrorist purposes."
"Mr. Arafat must do a better job," said Bush. "We believe he can do a better job, and he must do a better job."
Some administration officials, in particular those centered in Vice President Cheney's office, advocated breaking all ties with Arafat on grounds that he was untrustworthy and tainted with terrorism. Asked last week if such a move was under consideration, Bush said only that he was disappointed with Arafat and that the Palestinians were "enhancing terror."
Other officials argued that slamming the door on Arafat would not only send the Mideast spiraling into further chaos, but would also undermine crucial Arab participation in the larger war against terrorism.
In an interview published yesterday morning in the best-selling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said he plans to ask Bush to cease all U.S. contact with Arafat. "I plan to tell President Bush . . . I suggest you ignore Arafat. Boycott him. Not hold any contacts with him and not send any delegations to him," Sharon was quoted as saying.
For the past two months, Arafat has been held under virtual house arrest by the Israeli army, barred from his main headquarters in Gaza and confined to his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Palestinians and Western diplomats in Israel have warned that by forcing Arafat into a corner and attempting to isolate him, Sharon may in fact be strengthening his position among Palestinians. "The more he's humiliated by Sharon, the more the street embraces him," one diplomat in Israel said.
Yesterday's White House meeting with Abdullah coincided with reports of progress on U.S. demands to Arafat over the arms shipments. In a new letter sent to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell through the U.S. Embassy in Israel this week, Arafat assured Powell that he has ordered his security officials to crack down on any further arms smuggling, and said a senior Palestinian official implicated in the seized arms shipment had been arrested.
"We may be closer on the ship issue to the kinds of positive steps that we want to see than on broader questions involving terror and violence," David M. Satterfield, deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, said yesterday at the Israel Policy Forum, which favors Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
In what a State department official referred in part to Arafat's letter to Powell, Satterfield said that "actions taken by Chairman Arafat . . . offer a greater sense that he understands the seriousness" of U.S. concerns.
Staff writer Lee Hockstader in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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