*EPF202 04/24/01
Excerpt: Bush Administration Fully Engaged in Mideast
(Powell says ending violence will aid peace) (500)

Secretary of State Colin Powell said on April 23 that the Bush Administration is fully engaged in trying to find a solution to the violence in the Mideast.

"The President is completely involved. I'm completely involved. We've been talking to leaders on a very regular basis," he said during an interview on the "Jim Lehrer News Hour."

Powell said he was "absolutely convinced that, until [the violence subsides], we're not going to be able to make progress" in peacemaking.

Following are excerpts related to Middle East issues taken from Secretary Powell's interview on the "Jim Lehrer News Hour" program on Monday, April 23:

(begin excerpt)

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of priorities, where does the Middle East fit in right now? You and the President have both made it clear that you're going to do it differently; you're going to handle the Middle East differently than prior administrations. Meanwhile, the violence is escalating every day ....

Are you changing your mind about [whether] you need to get more involved or the President needs to get more involved?

SECRETARY POWELL: The President is completely involved. I am completely involved. We have been talking to the leaders on a very regular basis. Last week, the President spoke to Prime Minister Sharon and also to President Bashar [Assad] in Syria. I talked to Mr. Arafat and I talked to Prime Minister Sharon, and I talk to Foreign Minister Peres on a regular basis. I meet with the other leaders in the region who have an interest.

We are working the violence problem at two levels right now. We have a series of security meetings taking place under U.S. "hospitality", I should put it, where we're getting serious people together to figure out how to get the violence down. And we have another level that we're working at to get other connections going on between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.

The first step in restoring a sense of normalcy and getting back ultimately to a negotiation track is to get the violence down. I am absolutely convinced [that], until that starts to happen, we're not going to be able to make progress in other baskets. And hopefully, I think there's a little bit of traction now starting to take place as people see that we can't keep doing what we have seen being done in recent weeks.

This isn't a matter of lack of engagement on the part of the United States. It's just doing it a slightly different way without a lot of attention being drawn to all the things we are doing. But we are engaged. We cannot fail but to be engaged. It is a major challenge for the world, a major challenge for the United States, and it takes a lot of my time.

(end excerpt)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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