1
December 2004
Arafat’s death leaves little hope for U.S. involvement in Mideast peacemaking
By Warren P. Strobel
KRT Wire Service
WASHINGTON - Yasser Arafat's death opens a
narrow window of opportunit>' for President Bush to
engage decisively for the first time in making peace
between Israel and the Palestinians, current and for
mer U.S. ofTicials said recently.
If histor>' is any guide, the chance will be fleeting,
extremists could sabotage any progress with violence
and political caution could lead to missed opportuni
ties.
Following the lead of Israeli FYime Minister Anel
Sharon, Bush refused to have any dealings with
Arafat for more than two years because of the
Palestinian leader's unwillingness to end terror attacks
on Israelis. Bush instead called on Palestinians to
choose leaders committed to peace.
In that time, the United States was essentially
absent from what diplomats euphemistically call “the
peace process.” Sharon went his own way, building a
security wall along the West Bank and planning
Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
With Arafat's death, which came eight days after
Bush's re-election, diplomats expect Bush and Sharon
to come under shaiply increased international pres
sure to work direcfly with the Palestinians. Bush
recently met with his closest foreign ally, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, who backs a new Mideast
peacemaking push.
The key question is whether the Bush administra
tion will intervene to promote an Israeli-Palestinian
dialogue or hang back to see what kind of Palestinian
leaders emerge.
“We need to get in there now ... and begin to
have a three-way dialogue," said Dennis Ross, the
U.S. Middle East envoy under the first President
Bush and President Qinton.
Palestinians are supposed to hold elections for a
new president within 60 days.
But the elections won't come off unless Israel
eases restnctions on Palestinian life and the
Palestinians don't take advantage of the easing to pur
sue terrorist attacks, said Ross, author of a recent
book, “The Missing Peace,” on previous attempts at
Arab-Israeli rapprochement that fell short.
Bush and his top aides have reacted cautiously
since Arafat fell seriously ill late last month.
The president reaffirmed his commitment to a
Palestinian state, but he and retiring Secretary of State
Colin Powell have put the onus on the Palestinians to
take the first steps.
Powell said that the leaders who replace Arafat
must pledge to fight terrorism and rally the
Palestinians behind that course. “If that kind of lead
ership emerges that can do that, then we stand ready
to work with them,” he said.
Bush chose to send Assistant Secretary of State
William Bums, a midlevel official, to Arafat's funeral
Friday in Cairo. Most other countries are sending for
eign ministers or, in some cases, their leaders.
Flynt Leverett, a former White House and QA
official now at the Washington-based Brookings
Institution, said Powell should have been dispatched
and called it “a missed opportunity to move this
process forward.”
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities
involved, said the choice of Bums “was the balance
the government came up with” between showing
respect for the Palestinians and the White House's
aversion to Arafat.
Yet, the White House is keen to support
Palestinian elections, precisely how hasn't been estab
lished, and has sent the message to its allies in
Europe and elsewhere that “we're open-minded”
about how to move forward, the same official said.
Two aides to national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice, Daniel Fried and Elliott Abrams,
met last week with European representatives to coor
dinate actions after Arafat's death, according to U.S.
officials and others who follow the region.
They agreed to continue to support Sharon's plan
to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from the occu
pied Gaza Strip, according to one individual briefed
on the meeting.
With Arafat dead, the most immediate concern is
that Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad could exploit the power vac
uum and try to seize control. They might even put
forward candidates for high office or form political
arms, as other terrorist groups have done.
Extremists who oppose Israel's existence “will
sense an opportunity as w'ell,” said the U.S. official
Gaza-based Hamas, however, has been decimated by
Israel's assassination of many of its top leaders.
Ross said concerns over a Palestinian civil war aie
overblown, at least in the short tenn.
“There's a really strong predisposition on the part
of the Palestinians to try to hold it together,” he said
in a telephone interview. "They have a very pro-
nouiKed fear of ‘fitna’” or civil war. he said.
Whether stability endures depends in pail on
whether and how elections are held, he said.
For now, the leading candidate to succeed Arafat
is former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who was
elected recently as head of the Palestine Liberation
Organization.
Abbas, who has little of Arafat's charisma, is a
secular moderate who negotiated with Israelis to
achieve the Oslo peace agreement and opposes vio
lence to achieve Palestinian goals.
Many observers, including some U.S. and Israeli
officials, believe Bush and Sharon missed a chance to
help promote moderate Palestinian leadership when
Abbas was prime minister for four months last year.
Abbas, who got little but rhetorical support from
ttie United States and Israel, quit alter failing to gam
significant powers from Arafat.
Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, “needed to be
empowered,” said Jonathan Lincoln, a senior research
associate at the private Council on Foreign Relations,
adding that Israel holds the key. ‘They did then. They
do now,” he said.
Slow response to oil spill
threatens environment
and birds, officials say
AUTOMOTIVE from page 8
By Tom Avril and Terry Bitman
KRT Wire Service
PHILADELPHIA - After the tanker
Athos I was found to be leaking thou
sands of gallons of oil into the Delaware,
it took more than five hours for contrac
tors to start closing off the mouths of 12
tributaries. Coast Guard officials said
recently.
As a result, an unknown portion of the
30,000 gallons of heavy Venezuelan
crude made its way into tributaries, con
sidered more ecologically sensitive than
the main stem of the river.
New Jersey and Coast Guard officials
said after the spill was first noticed, con
tractors and government personnel
responded as quickly as possible, as dic
tated by spill, response rules set up after
the far larger Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.
But it wasn't quickly enough, said
environmental advocate Maya K. van
Rossum, who is head of the Delaware
Riverkeeper Network. She said she
tramped along the Woodbury and
Mantua creeks Sunday in New Jersey
and found thick patches of oil.
"The effort to keep it out of the tribu
taries, from my observation, did not
work," van Rossum said. "Up
Woodbury Creek, it was horrible."
Petty officer Jaime Bigelow, a Coast
Guard spokesman, said contractors
began closing off tributaries at 3 a.m.
Saturday morning with floating plastic
booms. More than half of the creeks
were finished by 8 a.m., though some
were not finished until the end of the
day, he said.
"The process definitely takes time,"
Bigelow said.
Oil was spotted over a 29-mile stretch,
from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge to the
Delaware Memorial Bridge.
Jonathan D. Sarubbi, captain of the
Port of Philadelphia, said "overall the
spill response has gone very well."
The effort has involved 557 govern
ment and private-sector employees, 66
boats, skinuners, rakes, shovels and
37,000 feet of booms. The booms
included 33,000 feet of yellow booms
used to block oil, and 4,000 feet of white,
polypropylene material that is designed
to absorb the viscous, black liquid.
Anywhere from 500 to 1,000 birds are
believed to have been "oiled," said
Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the
New Jersey Department of
Environmental Protection. Most are
common birds such as Canada geese,
gulls and ducks, but there was a report
that a pair of nesting bald eagles were
injured, Campbell said.
"We expect to recover only a mere
fraction of the birds that were affected,"
Campbell said. "Of those, only a fraction
will survive."
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