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| Israel-Palestine |
| Powell bawls out the Fish |
| 2004-05-17 |
| Hat tip LGF U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday blamed Yasser Arafat for blocking U.S. efforts to strengthen Palestinian security forces as a means of ending terror attacks on Israel. Winding up his latest effort to push peacemaking forward, without any apparent concrete results, Powell also criticized Arafat for a statement the Palestinian leader made Saturday to his people urging them to "find whatever strength you have to terrorize your enemy." "Mr. Arafat continues to take actions and make statements to make it exceptionally difficult to move forward" on peacemaking, Powell said at a news conference before returning to Washington from the World Economic Forum held at an isolated Dead Sea resort. He said Arafat "refuses to allow consolidation of security forces" among the Palestinians, a key U.S. demand intended to curb terror attacks and motivate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to push ahead with efforts to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. "What I need from the Palestinians is for them to get themselves ready to exercise solid political control over Gaza when it’s turned back to them and to put into place security forces that can do that," Powell said later in an interview taped with ABC for broadcast on the network’s "This Week" show. "What they need to do is to wrest control of the security forces from Chairman Arafat. ... The Palestinian leaders can do it and the leaders of the Arab world can do it by saying to Chairman Arafat that you’re policies have not been successful, your leadership has not be successful in moving this process forward." In a separate interview for the same ABC show, King Abdullah II of Jordan avoided a direct answer when asked whether Arafat was an obstacle to peace, but said: "There is this unfortunate competition between Palestinian political society and that is weakening the Palestinian position. Until they can unify and come up with strategy that allows the international community to help them, then they will be in a very weak position. Arafat will have to decide how he is going to sort of implement himself in the future of Palestine." Powell also had some criticism for Israel at his news conference. "We oppose the destruction of homes," said Powell. "We don’t think that is productive. We know Israel has a right for self-defense, but the kind of actions that they’re taking in Rafah with the destruction of Palestinian homes we oppose." Powell met Saturday with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and urged him to seize the opportunity for dismantling Israeli settlements in Gaza and some on the West Bank under a proposal offered by Sharon. Qurei was noncommittal in his public statements afterward, but Powell said the prime minister, on whom the Bush administration has pinned much of its hopes for a reversal in lagging peace efforts, had agreed to look at whatever refinements Sharon makes in his proposal to evacuate all soldiers and the 7,500 Jewish settlers from the coastal strip following its rejection by hard-liners in his own Likud party. President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is due to meet in Berlin on Monday with Qurei as part of the renewed Bush administration effort to bring about Palestinian statehood sometime next year, a goal the president himself recently acknowledged was in danger of not being met. Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, standing beside Powell at a joint news conference, said he hoped the meeting with Rice "will be a step toward moving the process forward." Powell, again endorsing Sharon’s proposal, called it "a way to get us out of this circle" and said the Israeli people want to move ahead on coming to terms with the Palestinians. On the touchy issue of U.S. soldiers mistreating Iraqi detainees at a prison in Baghdad, Muasher said "there was an uproar" among Arabs, while Powell said "we are doing everything we can to deal with the frustration in the Arab world." |
| Posted by:Korora |
| #2 Winding up his latest effort to push peacemaking forward, without any apparent concrete results, Powell also criticized Arafat for a statement the Palestinian leader made Saturday to his people urging them to "find whatever strength you have to terrorize your enemy." "Mr. Arafat continues to take actions and make statements to make it exceptionally difficult to move forward" on peacemaking, Powell said at a news conference before returning to Washington from the World Economic Forum held at an isolated Dead Sea resort. "Exceptionally difficult"? How about straight talk, and just say "impossible"? One other question: does anyone in their right mind still think Arafart is some sort of statesman or "peacemaker", and not really a terrorist? |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-05-17 2:19:19 PM |
| #1 "What they need to do is to wrest control of the security forces from Chairman Arafat. ... The Palestinian leaders can do it and the leaders of the Arab world can do it by saying to Chairman Arafat that you’re policies have not been successful, your leadership has not be successful in moving this process forward." They will never wrest control from Arafat's shaking hands. They are all suicidal maniacs. I hope powell is not so stupid to believe his own words. What is needed is a brutal and blunt removal of Arafat from power (and preferably from the land of the living). Only then there may be a slim chance of some pragmatic leader leading these maniacs to the voice of reason. |
| Posted by: The Dodo 2004-05-17 12:46:02 PM |