The Arafat exception continues apace. I can't wait to hear with the GOP has to say about this:
U.S. Pushing Israel to Accept Arafat for Negotiations
By TODD S. PURDUM with JUDITH MILLER
WASHINGTON, May 4 — The White House is making last-minute efforts to persuade the Israeli government that it must deal with Yasir Arafat even as the Israelis are conducting a sustained campaign to discredit him.
The dueling campaigns come as both sides prepare for a meeting here between President Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday.
The immediate challenge for Mr. Bush, one senior foreign policy aide said, is to "convince the Israelis it's in their long-term interest to deal with Arafat, no matter how reprehensible he may be."
But in recent days, the Israeli officials have been campaigning to dismiss Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority as a plausible negotiating partner, based on documents Israel has seized in raids on the West Bank, and interrogations of some 1,800 Palestinians arrested during the offensive, including senior aides to Mr. Arafat.
Israeli intelligence officials have briefed their counterparts in Washington on what they say is evidence showing that the Palestinian Authority presides over a terrorist network, one that plans, finances and executes its own suicide bombings against civilians, and cooperates with militant Islamic groups.
Israel has begun to show a sampling of what it says it has collected in its largest ground offensive in 20 years: homemade weapons, disguises, stolen Israeli identity cards, posters in honor of the suicide bombers and some of the roughly 500,000 documents seized. [Page 20.]
Among the documents are ones that appear to record Mr. Arafat's approval of a $600 payment to the leader of an attack on a bat mitzvah party that left six people dead and 50 wounded, and a Palestinian request to build a heavy arms workshop.
There is also a document bearing the logo of the Saudi Committee for Assistance to the Al Quds Intifada that, the Israelis say, details more than $500,000 in payments to the families of 102 "martyrs," at least 8 of whom were involved in suicide attacks.
The Palestinians challenge the authenticity of the documents, and clearly the Israeli release of the documents is an effort to point out a contradiction between how Mr. Bush is dealing with terrorist groups and how the administration proposes to deal with Mr. Arafat.
White House officials say that even if the documents are convincing, they do not remove the political necessity to work with Mr. Arafat under the kind of peace plan that Mr. Bush is trying to pursue with the help of friendly Arab countries.
Mr. Sharon, who arrives in Washington late on Sunday, is expected to argue that Mr. Bush's efforts to broker peace are doomed as long as they depend on the Palestinian leader.
"The Israelis were truly shocked by the amount of information they found" about Palestinian Authority links to terrorism in their recent sweeps and raids in Palestinian areas, one senior administration official said. "Even they didn't think that the kind of collusion with some of these terrorist groups was so extensive," the official said.
Still, this official said of Mr. Sharon's government, "they've got to understand that only by having a responsible Palestinian Authority are we going to solve these questions, and that Yasir Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian Authority."
Mr. Sharon's face-to-face encounter with the president, set for Tuesday afternoon in the Oval Office, promises to be an unusual and risky confrontation for the two blunt-talking, conservative leaders.
Administration officials have been in intense discussions with their Israeli counterparts about how to make the hourlong meeting on Tuesday successful. Before meeting Mr. Bush, Mr. Sharon is expected to meet several administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon seemed to forge a bond four years ago when Mr. Sharon took Mr. Bush, then the governor of Texas, on a helicopter tour of the West Bank and Gaza. But in the last month that relationship has soured, as Mr. Bush privately fumed over Mr. Sharon's refusal for weeks to heed his call for withdrawal "without delay" from the West Bank.
The crisis eased this week with the Israeli withdrawal from Ramallah and its agreement to free Mr. Arafat — a deal that led to Mr. Sharon's invitation to Washington. One administration official said Mr. Sharon "now knows that the president's support isn't automatic."
In Israel, officials said Mr. Sharon would pursue three goals in his trip. One is the substitution of new Palestinian leadership for Mr. Arafat, the second is the development of concrete ideas for the Middle East conference that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has proposed for this summer, and lastly, the coordination of American and Israeli policy.
As for the summer meeting, "We don't want to go there and be surprised by any initiative of which we will not be part," an Israeli official said. The meeting may bring together foreign ministers of Arab states, Europe, Russia, as well as Israel and the United States, to discuss ideas.
But Israel will request that Syria not be allowed to attend the conference because it has been accused of harboring terrorists, an Israel official said. Arab states also began issuing their own conditions today. Egypt's foreign minister said Israel must withdraw from all Palestinian-controlled territory before there could be discussion of a peace conference, Reuters reported.
In Washington, the unresolved question is how much Mr. Bush can — or wants — to push Mr. Sharon to go along with an American plan to revive negotiations with the Palestinians.
The president's father pursued negotiations a decade ago, and President Bill Clinton adopted the same course until negotiations begun at Camp David collapsed in Egypt at the end of his administration.
Mr. Sharon has steadfastly resisted, and here in Washington he is expected to nurture the Republican right wing that has accused Mr. Bush of not fully backing Israel's hard-line strategies.
He is also likely to ask for support for Mr. Arafat's exile.
The White House says that Mr. Bush is pursuing what he views as the best strategy, regardless of the pressures from within his own party. But his political aides are clearly aware that Mr. Bush's allies have been far more critical of his approach than have the Democrats.
The diplomatic approach Mr. Bush enunciated just a month ago is threatened by Mr. Sharon's refusal to deal with Mr. Arafat. That approach envisions a division of labor, in which Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, are to be responsible for putting pressure on Mr. Arafat, while the president presses Mr. Sharon to embrace concrete steps toward creation of a Palestinian state.
Two days after Mr. Sharon leaves, King Abdullah II of Jordan will arrive to hold talks with Mr. Bush on the next steps in forcing Mr. Arafat to rein in extremists and keep a lid on suicide bombings.
Mr. Bush insists his approach can work, if only the Israelis and the Palestinians follow his lead. "I'm optimistic we're making good progress," he said on Thursday, after meeting with European leaders about the Middle East at the White House. "After all, a week ago, Yasir Arafat was boarded up in his building in Ramallah, a building full of evidently, German peace protesters and all kinds of people. They're now out. He's now free to show leadership, to lead the world."
Mr. Bush has told Mr. Sharon privately that he deeply distrusts Mr. Arafat, and would like to find other Palestinians to negotiate with, American officials say. Secretary Powell has had repeated meetings with some Arafat deputies, but no one in the administration has found a way to avoid Mr. Arafat as long as he remains the designated Palestinian leader.
So, according to administration officials, Mr. Bush plans to tell Mr. Sharon that the strategy of getting Arab states to press the Palestinian leader is working, so that Mr. Sharon should not say or do anything that rocks that plan.
"We think we've seen some breakthroughs, starting at Crawford," a senior administration official deeply involved in the negotiations said in an interview on Friday. He was referring to the meeting between Mr. Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the president's ranch in Texas 10 days ago.
"The Saudis were very active in bringing Arafat's acquiescence to the Ramallah deal," the official said, referring to the Palestinian agreement to let American and British wardens oversee the imprisonment of six Palestinian men whom the Palestinians convicted in the assassination of Israel's tourism minister last October. "And I believe the Egyptians called Arafat, too. So there are signs it can work," if indeed the Saudis and Egyptians can bring much influence to bear on Mr. Arafat.
nytimes.com |
