OT
interesting article here ....
From the Washington Post
Bush to Propose Palestinian State Soon
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 19, 2002; Page A01
President Bush plans in the coming days to propose the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional boundaries, most likely in September, with negotiations over permanent borders to be completed within three years, U.S. and diplomatic sources said.
In a much-anticipated speech outlining his Middle East policy, the president will propose that the plan be adopted at an international conference, tentatively set for September, provided measurable progress has been made in revamping Palestinian security forces and reducing violence against Israeli civilians, the sources said.
Achievement of the three-year deadline for final settlement of the most difficult Israeli-Palestinian issues, including the status of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees, will also be dependent on measurable benchmarks for both sides, the sources said.
The issue of whether to call for the early establishment of a Palestinian state, even an interim state of a reduced size, has been at the center of the administration‘s deliberations over where Bush should next direct the two-state vision he first articulated late last year.
Many in the administration remain doubtful that enough improvement can be made in the security situation within the next three months to secure the agreement of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the president‘s plan and at least a partial pullback of Israeli military forces that provisional borders would require.
But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has argued that, while the United States has an obligation to safeguard Israel‘s security, nothing less than a time-specific "political horizon" would satisfy Arab leaders or give the Palestinian people enough hope to end their support of violence.
Bush‘s speech, which had been scheduled for delivery today, was postponed in the wake of the latest Palestinian suicide bombing, a bus explosion that killed 19 Israelis yesterday in Jerusalem. Sources said that a new date has not been set but that plans are to deliver the speech between Thursday and Monday. Bush is scheduled to depart Tuesday for a two-day summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Canada.
The president was told of the latest attack in a 5 a.m. telephone call yesterday from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. "The general feeling was, you couldn‘t walk out in the Rose Garden tomorrow and talk about ‘a peace proposal‘ given what happened," one source said.
The administration also wanted to see what Israel‘s response to the bombing would be, sources said. Late yesterday, Israeli ground and air forces again moved into the West Bank city of Jenin, alleged by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be a center of terrorist planning.
The bus attack not only delayed the speech, but also to some extent reopened discussions within the administration over whether the president should be "rewarding" the Palestinians with a state as long as the bombings continue. That position is held by some in Vice President Cheney‘s office and in the Defense Department.
While confirming the current state of timing and decision-making on the president‘s speech, including a meeting of senior officials on the subject at the White House today, sources cautioned that the contents will not be final until Bush delivers his remarks. Many of the details are still being fine-tuned, they said, and the volatile situation on the ground still threatens to change the administration‘s plans.
Although Middle East leaders have not been given a draft of the speech, sources said, they have been involved in ongoing high-level discussions about it. Representatives of several regional governments said yesterday that they believed they would be fully informed before the president delivered it.
Israel is likely to be the most difficult sell, although administration officials have said Sharon will not have a veto. Touring the Jerusalem attack site yesterday, a visibly angry Sharon referred to reports that Bush was considering calling for the early establishment of a Palestinian state, saying: "It is interesting to know what kind of Palestinian state they mean. What Palestinian state? The horrible thing that we see here is a continuation of Palestinian terror, and against this terror we must fight and struggle, and that we will do."
But an Israeli official cautioned to "look at the words," rather than the emotion of Sharon‘s statements yesterday and in the past, in which he has not ruled out a Palestinian state but said that conditions were not right for it.
"From Israel‘s perspective," the official said, "many things are possible as long as the sequence is correct. When he says no," Sharon means that "terror has to stop and reforms have to kick in."
The official noted that Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said in a statement Monday that he expected the U.S. proposal to include both the establishment of a Palestinian state and reform of the Palestinian Authority. Saying such an entity could be up and running within eight weeks, Peres said, "We call it a provisional state, but provisional are the borders, not the state."
But just as in the Bush administration, many Israeli officials strongly doubt that enough security progress can be made in time. Sources here said that a lot will depend on whether CIA Director George J. Tenet, whom Bush has put in charge of helping the Palestinians develop a new security structure, can implement ideas he has put on the table.
A return visit by Powell to the region is also under discussion, perhaps as early as next week, sources said, but no decision has been made. They did not indicate whether the Bush plan included explicit acceptance of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as that side‘s main interlocutor, something that Israel has said it cannot abide.
For their part, Arab officials were cautiously optimistic yesterday. Despite adamant public declarations that nothing less than a fixed date for a full Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders would be acceptable, officials said that the Bush plan had positive elements. "If we have a light, even a dim light" at the end of the tunnel, progress is possible, said one Arab official.
The Bush proposal, which includes early recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations, is similar to one negotiated late last year, but never finally agreed on, by Peres and Ahmed Qureia, the speaker of the Palestinian legislature. That proposal called for an initial state in 40 percent to 50 percent of the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The international conference, to be conducted at the ministerial level under the auspices of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, was originally envisioned for the end of July, at the latest. It is to be headed by Powell and attended by most, if not all, governments in the region. There is still some dispute over whether countries such as Syria, which Israel holds directly responsible for much of the terrorism, would attend. Although serious consideration is being given to Washington as a venue, no decision has been made.
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