Secretary of State Colin Powell talks to reporters at the State Department Friday, June 13, 2003. Powell talked about the recent surge in violence between Israel and the Palestinians and the status of President Bush's road map for Middle East peace. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
09:56 AM EST June 14, 2003
The Associated Press
WASHINGTONSyria, listed by the United States as a sponsor of terrorism, is the latest Arab country that Secretary of State Colin Powell is asking to help quash terrorist acts in the Middle East.
Powell made the request in a telephone call to Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa on Friday. He had made similar appeals to the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia a day earlier.
In all the conversations, Powell's message was "to stop the violence, to stop the violent groups," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. He said some of those groups, including Hamas, have offices in Damascus.
"I think it is clear what we want," Powell told reporters meanwhile. "Hamas to stop it. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Brigades, all of them to stop it."
"We have to get moving and bring the terror down," he said.
On the Israeli side, Powell said "we all are anxious to see restraint."
But he said "we understand that it's important to get the terror down" and if that happens "the response to terror will no longer be required."
Assistant Secretary of State John S. Wolf will arrive in the area this weekend to try to spur Israel and the Palestinians into peacemaking moves, Boucher said.
Wolf will head a group of State Department and CIA officials whose assignment is to help mediate between the two sides and to assist in strengthening security.
They will start meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials shortly after their arrival, the spokesman said.
Asked about a pause Friday in the bloodletting, Boucher said, "I don't think we count it in hours."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "Wolf's mission is to help the parties even in the darkest moments find their way to remember the vision to peace."
President Bush expects them to help both sides implement a road map to peace, "knowing that there will be violence that interrupts progress on the way toward implementing the actions that both parties are supposed to take," Fleischer said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has suggested positioning an armed force as a buffer between Israel and the Palestinians.
Boucher, in response, said third parties could help but it was mostly up to Israel and the Palestinians to stem the violence.
"It is an idea that comes up again and again," he said. "Frankly, we've heard people talk about it the last 10 or 15 years. But, again and again when it's come up, I think people who have looked at it closely have always said, absent the agreement of the parties, the interpositional force can't achieve its own goals without the parties agreeing to do certain things."
At the same time, Boucher said the administration has urged the European Union to designate the political arm of Hamas as a terror group. The State Department makes no distinction between political and military parts of such groups in designating them as terrorists.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the road map would not survive unless there was "some sort of cease-fire and absolute end to terror."
Otherwise, he said, "this whole thing might be an exercise in futility."
But Shoval, in his appearance before the Hudson Institute, a private research group, said, "Israel is not going to be a spoiler as long as there is a reasonable chance of progress."
Sharon this weekend is sending another aide, Dov Weisglass, to Washington to meet with Condoleezza Rice, who is Bush's assistant for national security.
|