Powell Seeks Accelerated Efforts on Mideast Conflict

(Speaks about Middle East trip on CNN's Late Edition April 21) (3180)

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Israelis, Palestinians, the
United States and the international community have to accelerate their
efforts to implement security cooperation, political negotiations,
humanitarian relief and economic reconstruction to find a resolution
to the Mideast crisis.

Speaking on CNN's Late Edition April 21, Powell said that many aspects
of concern to Israelis and Palestinians are in need of urgent
discussion.

"I have been focusing on security, on more rapid movement to
negotiations, a political process, and humanitarian efforts and
reconstruction and economic rebuilding. All of these have now come
together in a more accelerated way, and we have to get going," said
Powell.

"The Palestinian people are looking for security in their own homes --
as they see it, security from harassment, security from humiliation,
security from Israeli responses. The Israelis want to live in peace
and security in their own homes and in their communities, but they
know that the way to get there is through discussions that will lead
to a political settlement," he said.

Powell repeated his earlier praise of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's
proposal of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

"[T]his is a powerful statement coming from the Arab side. It's a
powerful statement not just because it comes from the Arab side, but
because it's a message to Chairman Arafat as well that we all now have
to join in moving forward toward peace and toward negotiations," said
Powell.

The secretary affirmed that the Israeli military had met the
withdrawal timelines given to the Bush Administration by Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, and said the United States was working to find
solutions to end the continuing standoffs in Bethlehem and Ramallah.

"We do not want to see the situation resolved in a violent way, and
that is our message right now: give us time to find a way out of this,
and let's not try to solve it through the use of any violence," said
Powell.

Powell said the Bush Administration was encouraging Israel to open up
the Jenin area to facilitate humanitarian relief efforts, and that the
United States was "doing whatever we can to help."

"We are sending in 800 tents, family-size tents, to be provided to
people who have lost their homes. We are sending in enough water
purification equipment to take care of 10,000 people a day, and over a
thousand disease reduction kits, they're called, to try to keep
communicable diseases from spreading in this current situation of lack
of sanitation, lack of running water," he said.

Powell said Assistant Secretary of State William Burns had visited the
Jenin refugee camp April 20 for over three hours and "his reports were
very troubling -- the suffering that has occurred, the humanitarian
need that exists."

"But in three hours he couldn't come to any conclusions as to whether
there was unwise use of force. That's why it was important for us to
have a UN team go in," said Powell.

Following is a transcript of Secretary of State Powell on CNN's Late
Edition April 21:

(begin transcript)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman For Immediate Release

April 21, 2002

Interview of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell By Wolf Blitzer of
CNN's Late Edition

April 21, 2002 Washington, D.C.

(12:12 p.m. EDT)

MR. BLITZER: Mr. Secretary, thanks once again for joining us on Late
Edition. Welcome back from the Middle East. Where do you go from here?
Are you sending the CIA Director George Tenet to pick up where you
left off?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, not yet. The first thing we had to see is the
Israeli withdrawal, and now we see that that is in full swing. It
doesn't mean the crisis is over. Many of the Israeli units will still
be in the outskirts of some of these towns, and just on the other side
of Zone B. And we want to see access now. We want to see life start to
return to normal in these towns and cities. But the withdrawal that
Prime Minister Sharon and I spoke about last week, and the schedule
for the withdrawal, he has met the timelines that he gave me last
week, and I am pleased about that. And it's two weeks and two days
from the President's speech of April 4th.

Now that that is underway, I think opportunities present themselves to
begin security coordination again. We still have two difficult issues:
the Mukataa in Ramallah where Chairman Arafat is located, and the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We are working both of those
problems, trying to find a solution to really not so much directly
related to withdrawal as they are to the peculiar circumstances of
these two situations -- the Ze'evi murderers in the Mukataa and
Ramallah and the people who are detained inside the Church of the
Nativity -- and we've got to solve both of them.

MR. BLITZER: Well, let's talk about both of those issues very briefly.
The five suspected killers of the Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam
Ze'evi. Do you believe that they should be handed over to the
Israelis, as the Israelis demand? Or the Palestinians have proposed
that they put them on trial. Do you have confidence in a Palestinian
trial of them?

SECRETARY POWELL: I am trying to broker a solution. One the one hand,
the Israelis feel very, very strongly that they committed a crime
against Israeli citizens; they should be under Israeli jurisdiction
and go before an Israeli tribunal. The Palestinians are of the view
that they have them in detention now, and under the provisions of the
bilateral agreement that they have with the Israelis, that's where
they belong and they should be tried by Palestinian authorities.

I think what we should be doing right now, and what we are doing right
now, is looking for ways to bridge these two positions and see if we
can't find a solution. We have faced difficult jurisdictional problems
like this in the past and found solutions, and we're looking for a
solution now. We do not want to see the situation resolved in a
violent way, and that is our message right now: give us time to find a
way out of this, and let's not try to solve it through the use of any
violence.

MR. BLITZER: Well, is one possibility the US might take custody of
these five suspected terrorists?

SECRETARY POWELL: Now, that is not one of the possibilities, but I
would rather not tick-tock through the list of possibilities.

MR. BLITZER: The Israelis also say they want another individual, a man
by the name of Fouad al-Shoubaki, who they say was responsible for the
Karine-A shipment, the shipment of arms from Iran to the Palestinian
Authority. First of all, do you believe that he was acting on his own,
that Yasser Arafat knew nothing about that shipment?

SECRETARY POWELL: What we have said is that we believe that knowledge
of that shipment extended rather high into the Palestinian Authority,
and as you know, Chairman Arafat gave us a letter some time ago
accepting responsibility on behalf of the Palestinian Authority for
that shipment.

MR. BLITZER: So that ends the issue right there? Should Mr. Shoubaki
be allowed to go free?

SECRETARY POWELL: No, I think this falls into the same category as the
Ze'evi killers, and we have to resolve this as a package.

MR. BLITZER: What about Bethlehem? How do you resolve that standoff,
where some 200 armed Palestinians remained holed up in the Church of
the Nativity in Manger Square?

SECRETARY POWELL: We have a number of interesting ideas that we're
looking at, not only US ideas but ideas that have been put forward by
other nations and some church officials. And we hope that the two
sides will begin talking to one another in a more focused way to find
a solution. And so it's a little bit like the situation in Ramallah,
but I'm hopeful that with goodwill on both sides, and an effort to
resolve it in a nonviolent way, we will find a solution.

MR. BLITZER: Lots of media reports that the CIA is directly involved
in trying to find a solution to the Church of the Nativity standoff.
Is that true?

SECRETARY POWELL: There are a number of people who are working on
solutions with respect to that standoff. I would not say that the CIA
is in the lead role at the moment.

MR. BLITZER: So is the State Department in a lead role on it?

SECRETARY POWELL: There are lots of people who are playing a role.

MR. BLITZER: What do you see as far as the accusation that the Prime
Minister of Israel defied the United States, the President of the
United States, in delaying the withdrawal from those areas that Israel
recently reoccupied?

SECRETARY POWELL: The President wanted to see the withdrawal take
place as quickly as possible, and he said that in his speech on the
4th of April, and he reinforced that the following Saturday, on the
6th of April, when he spoke in Crawford, Texas, with Prime Minister
Blair, and when he spoke to Prime Minister Sharon that afternoon.

We always recognize that you can't stop an operation like that
immediately; there would be some time lag. We would have preferred a
much shorter time lag. But when I visited with Prime Minister Sharon
on three occasions in the course of my trip, it was last weekend that
he gave me the specific timeline for the withdrawal. And I shared that
with the President, so we have been clocking that in the course of the
week and the withdrawal is taking place in accordance with the
timeline that Prime Minister Sharon and I discussed last weekend.

MR. BLITZER: The Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, are outraged
by the statement President Bush made that Ariel Sharon is a man of
peace. You've seen the reaction. First of all, do you believe that
Ariel Sharon is a man of peace?

SECRETARY POWELL: You know, in every conversation I've had with Prime
Minister Sharon, he has concentrated on security. He was elected to
office because Israel was not secure; the Intifada was killing on a
daily basis innocent civilians. So he was elected on a platform of
security. And we've talked about security repeatedly, but in every
conversation I've ever had with Prime Minister Sharon, when we talk
about security, we have also talked about the peace process. He has
recommitted himself over and over to the Tenet work plan, to the
Mitchell peace plan. He acknowledges that there is a need for a
Palestinian state.

Even just a few weeks ago, before the incursion began, the night
before the Passover massacre, he once again said that he was committed
to this, and he accepted the Tenet work plan and told General Zinni
that at the time -- the bridging proposal that General Zinni had put
forward. So he has shown, even while he is concentrating on security,
that he is interested in moving forward to negotiations and peace.

In my conversations with Chairman Arafat and with Arab leaders, I have
noted that same desire. It is Crown Prince Abdullah who went to the
Arab League summit in Beirut and put forward a powerful message of how
22 Arab states are now prepared to live in peace with Israel if issues
of boundary, if issues of refugees, if those other difficult issues
can be resolved. And this is a powerful statement coming from the Arab
side. It's a powerful statement not just because it comes from the
Arab side, but because it's a message to Chairman Arafat as well that
we all now have to join in moving forward toward peace and toward
negotiations.

And it's why in my press conference in Jerusalem before I left, and in
all the statements I've made, I have been focusing on security, on
more rapid movement to negotiations, a political process, and
humanitarian efforts and reconstruction and economic rebuilding. All
of these have now come together in a more accelerated way, and we have
to get going. There is a way to get going, and that's through Tenet
and Mitchell, but we have to accelerate our efforts. The Palestinian
people are looking for security in their own homes -- as they see it,
security from harassment, security from humiliation, security from
Israeli responses.

The Israelis want to live in peace and security in their own homes and
in their communities, but they know that the way to get there is
through discussions that will lead to a political settlement.

MR. BLITZER: Is Yasser Arafat, Mr. Secretary, a man of peace?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yasser Arafat I have talked to in considerable
detail in the two visits I had with him in Ramallah. And what I said
to him is that you have used terror and you have used violence to try
to achieve your goals; this is the time to stop moving in that
direction that will not lead you to your goals; this is the time to
make a strategic decision and to use your position as leader of the
Palestinian people, which the Palestinian people say you are, and
which I understand you are; now use that position to speak out against
incitement, to speak out against violence, to speak out against
terror, to tell your people that this is the time to use the good
offices of the United States and the international community -- the
Madrid statement we put out, the UN resolutions that have become so
powerful in recent weeks -- to move toward a peaceful solution.

It's the same message that I gave to all of our Arab friends as I
visited the region: Use your good offices; use your influence with the
Palestinian people, with the Palestinian leaders, to move us away from
incitement; use your leadership position with your own people to talk
against violence, talk against suicide bombing, and to talk to peace;
and let's give peace the opportunity to flourish because it is only
through negotiations that get us to peace will we find a solution that
will create another state, Palestine, living in peace side by side
with the state of Israel.

MR. BLITZER: Sir, are you prepared, when all is said and done, to say
today that Yasser Arafat is a man of peace?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think that we have to give him the chance to
demonstrate that he is a man of peace. It is not for me to designate
him or not designate him. The burden is on Chairman Arafat to match
deeds with words. He has said the right thing recently; now we have to
look for him to do the right thing, by speaking out as a leader and by
taking action within whatever capacity he has, however limited that
capacity might be, to take action to demonstrate to all of us that
that is what he wants -- peace and a Palestinian state.

MR. BLITZER: Former President Jimmy Carter, writing in the New York
Times today, had some recommendations for your administration. Among
other things, he said this: "It is time for the United States as the
sole recognized intermediary to consider more forceful action for
peace. The rest of the world will welcome this leadership." Among
other things, he says maybe it's time to reconsider all that US
military assistance to the Israelis if they're not using it legally
according to the stipulations provided under the existing legislation.

SECRETARY POWELL: We have no plans at the moment to restrict any of
the support that we provide to our friends, and have provided for many
years -- in fact, since President Carter was in office. And as the
President noted, I think we are being much more active. It is this
President, President George W. Bush, who went to the United Nations
last fall and called for the creation of a Palestinian state by the
name of Palestine, saying it for the first time in an international
forum such as that. In my Louisville speech last November, laid out a
comprehensive framework as to how we could move forward.

We have supported UN Resolutions 1397, 1402, 1403 -- all of which move
us in the right direction. We have embraced and welcomed Crown Prince
Abdullah's plan, his vision for a way forward, as captured now by the
Arab League. And President Bush looks forward to seeing Crown Prince
Abdullah later this week.

So we are engaged. The President sent me to the region. The President
has given me clear instructions as to what we want to do: security,
negotiations to get a political solution, and a humanitarian,
reconstruction, economic leg to our strategy.

MR. BLITZER: A lot of people have gone now into the Jenin refugee
camp, the Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank, and have
expressed horror at the sights that they have seen. I know that your
Assistant Secretary William Burns was just there. What did he tell you
about these allegations that the Israeli military may have been
involved in what the Palestinians say was a massacre?

SECRETARY POWELL: I sent Bill Burns in on Friday. He spent over three
hours in the camp, and his reports were very troubling -- the
suffering that has occurred, the humanitarian need that exists. But in
three hours he couldn't come to any conclusions as to whether there
was unwise use of force. That's why it was important for us to have a
UN team go in, and I'm pleased that the United States played the
leadership role on Friday in developing the resolution that will be
sending in a UN team. And I'm pleased that the Israeli government is
accepting a team to come in and find out the facts, and we will
support that team in every way possible.

We are also doing whatever we can to help in this humanitarian effort.
We are sending in 800 tents, family-size tents, to be provided to
people who have lost their homes. We are sending in enough water
purification equipment to take care of 10,000 people a day, and over a
thousand disease reduction kits, they're called, to try to keep
communicable diseases from spreading in this current situation of lack
of sanitation, lack of running water.

We are also encouraging the Israelis to open Jenin up as much as
possible to humanitarian relief. And finally, working with friends and
colleagues around the world to get more explosive ordnance demolition
teams in so that we can get rid of the booby traps and unexploded
ordnance which is getting in the way of the relief effort.

MR. BLITZER: Mr. Secretary, we have to leave it right there. I want to
thank you very much. Good luck.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you.

MR. BLITZER: It's a difficult mission. You have your hands full, as
you probably know by now.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Wolf.

###

(end transcript)

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