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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (26686)	4/23/2002 12:43:52 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Editorial: Pulling back? Powell's failed mission leaves U.S. on sideline Sacramento Bee Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Monday, April 22, 2002 sacbee.com President Bush says that Secretary of State Colin Powell "made progress" during his 10-day visit to the Middle East. If that's true, why is the president already pulling back after only two weeks of a belated attempt to take a more active role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Powell was berated in every Arab capital for a U.S. policy perceived as pro-Israeli. He failed to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to declare a cease-fire. Sharon agreed only to a partial withdrawal of troops from Palestinian areas occupied during Israel's military incursion. Arafat refused to crack down on terrorist bombers until Israel fully withdraws. That's progress? Bush now has two options: engage personally and vigorously by offering a comprehensive peace plan and exerting maximum pressure on Arafat and Sharon to negotiate; or pull back and resume his original policy of staying on the sidelines. He seems to have chosen the latter, but with a decidedly pro-Israel tone, which appears to reflect both his own impulses and major pressure from Congress and the American public. With no new ideas in evidence and no serious response to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's recent land-for-peace offer, U.S. officials are flirting with the idea of a proposal for an international conference along the lines of the 1991 Madrid meeting that launched the now-defunct peace process. But both Sharon and Arafat have laid down mutually unacceptable conditions, and even if a meeting were held, in the current climate it seems likelier to produce a war of words than a serious attempt to achieve results. Sharon defends Israel's military action in the West Bank as a justified effort to root out the "terrorist infrastructure." Fair enough; but many observers -- not only Palestinians -- say that Israeli troops, in laying waste to Palestinian refugee camps, have used excessive (often deadly) force against civilians and barred relief workers from reaching victims. These allegations, combined with the indisputable bulldozing of Palestinian homes, have resulted in a level of fury in the Arab world and beyond that equals Israelis' justified outrage over Palestinian suicide bombers. For his part, Arafat has bowed to the U.S. demand that he denounce terrorist attacks. But his credibility is, to say the least, not high. Those in Israel and this country who argue that peace cannot come with Arafat at the helm may be right, but he is widely supported among Arabs, and in Europe, and if Israel were to oust him, by whatever means, it would trigger an even greater outburst than the bloody clashes of recent weeks. Domestic pressure on Bush, which clearly outweighs in political terms competing criticism from the Arab world, helps to explain recent statements by the president and senior aides that appear to tilt first one way and then another. If Bush's current reversion to muting criticism of Israeli actions reflects the direction of U.S. policy, it's hard to see how the administration can play a consequential role in easing the Mideast conflict. That is even more the case if, as now seems apparent, the administration is bent on ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by force, an adventure that could deal an even graver blow to U.S. interests in the Middle East.