An assessment that the situation in the Middle East was becoming desperate led President Bush to order a sudden U.S. return to direct Mideast diplomacy, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday.
On a day when Mideast violence reached new levels of intensity, Powell said in an interview that the escalating cycle of killing between Palestinians and Israelis forced a rethinking of the administration’s prior insistence that there could be no diplomatic progress until the fighting abated.
“It’s becoming clear to everyone that as desirable as it would be to have zero violence and absolute quiet, it’s a very difficult thing to achieve,” Powell said. “The situation has become so desperate that it was necessary to move, in our judgment.”
In urgent phone conversations Friday morning with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Powell delivered a blunt message:
Bush had decided to send special envoy Anthony Zinni to the region not to spin his wheels and listen to arguments and counterarguments, but to begin to make progress on a cease-fire blueprint laid out nine months ago by CIA Director George Tenet.
Powell’s main message, he said, was “making absolutely crystal clear to them that this isn’t information gathering, this isn’t hearing two different points of view, this is to get into Tenet.”
Though he would not get into specifics, Powell said the two leaders gave him “some reason for a slight bit of optimism” that there would soon be noticeable letup in the violence that in 24 hours killed more than 40 Israelis and Palestinians.
“I encouraged both of them to do everything in their power to create the conditions of–let me call it calm, that would give hope to this initiative,” Powell said. “I also pointed out to both of them that the situation cannot continue the way it is. It should be clear to both sides that neither side will prevail in this kind of exchange of attacks and counterattacks.”
With Sharon, who has insisted on an absolute halt to violence before talks could resume, Powell recalled past conflicts such as the Vietnam and Korean Wars in which peace negotiations went on as fighting continued.
Late Friday, Sharon announced on Israeli television that he would drop his demand for a weeklong truce before returning to negotiations.
The Bush administration has faced mounting pressure, particularly from friendly Arab states in the region, to step up its involvement in Mideast peacemaking. Through most of the past week, administration spokesmen have repeated well-worn phrases about how it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to make peace, not for the U.S. to force it.
Several factors changed the administration posture, and, under prodding from Powell and the State Department, led Bush to approve the new round of shuttle diplomacy by Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general.
Cheney also leaves for region
Vice President Dick Cheney is to depart for the region Sunday for talks with Persian Gulf allies that could include discussion of U.S. options against Iraq. With the Mideast flooded with images of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, administration officials worried that Cheney’s broader strategic agenda for the region would be overshadowed.
“As long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is continuing in the way that it has been for the past year it makes it difficult for us in a number of ways,” Powell said. “It affects our standing in the region. It affects all of our bilateral relations.”
The problem, he said, is not so much the leaders of these Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan, but the “Arab street,” a euphemism for popular opinion in the Arab world.
U.S. focuses on `Arab street’
“This intense feeling in the Arab street about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the connection that the United States has to Israel–which will always be there–makes our job harder,” Powell said.
The timing of the Zinni trip, coming just before Cheney’s departure, also gives the vice president something tangible to show Mideast leaders concerned about the level of U.S. involvement.
“The notion that somehow we are not engaged is not a valid one,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters Friday on the Cheney trip. “And Zinni’s presence, I think, will reaffirm that.”
Another factor in Bush’s decision to dispatch Zinni was the Saudi peace initiative and the Arab League Summit in Beirut at the end of this month where it will be discussed and possibly voted on by Arab leaders. Under the proposal, Israel would agree to pull back to the borders it had before the 1967 war. In exchange, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states would normalize relations with Israel and guarantee peace.
Saudi plan `very significant’
“That is very, very significant,” Powell said. “It may have been said in other ways in the past, but never quite this way by this country, and with the word `normalization’ in the proposal.”
Up to now, the Bush administration has, to a somewhat lesser degree, adopted the Israeli position that peace negotiations could not occur amid violence.
The new view, forged by unrelenting fighting, is that waiting for violence to end before conducting peace talks could mean there will be no talks. The administration is hoping that even the bare beginnings of a dialogue will, itself, ease the tension and create a path back to the peace table.
A second shift involves the administration’s new view that the outlines of a final agreement must be in view as an incentive to keep both sides talking.
“This only works if everybody can see a political solution,” Powell said. “It can’t just be cease-fire, security, or cease-fire, security and confidence-building. There has to be a political solution that is arrived at through negotiations between two parties.”
The remark appeared to be an implied critique of the approach taken up to now, which pushed final-status issues far down the road and sought to focus the parties on more limited goals of security and stability. The combination of continuing violence and the image of a future peace posed by the Saudi initiative changed administration thinking, Powell said.
But Powell rejected the oft-heard criticism of the Bush administration that it has been “on the sidelines” in the Mideast conflict.
Speaking after a day of almost non-stop phone calls to heads of state and foreign ministers on the Mideast crisis, Powell said, “I know it’s a great sound-bite to say we’ve been on the sidelines. I tell you what: It hasn’t been like the sidelines to me.”
