Powell spells political

Following Ahmed Maher's visit to Washington, Colin Powell is in the Middle East to bolster the shaky Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire.Hoda Tawfik in Washington and Nevine Khalil in Cairo report
President George W Bush's decision to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East is being viewed as a significant policy shift from the Bush administration's initial position of maintaining a low profile in Arab-Israeli peace making.
The new approach confirms that the administration recognises the potential for the conflict to widen in an area where the United States has major interests.
"The Tenet plan and the Mitchell report are connected," Powell declared at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher following their meeting in Washington last Thursday.
"It has always been inherent in our discussions and our understanding of the situation that wherever you start, you must end up at a political process, so that these very difficult issues can be dealt with," Powell said.
Powell was scheduled to begin his regional tour by meeting President Hosni Mubarak yesterday near Alexandria.
Nabil Shaath, Palestinian minister of international cooperation, who was in Washington at the time of Maher's visit, warned: "We are basically inches away from the brink of the abyss, and we could slide back."
Maher said the shaky nature of the cease-fire makes it imperative for the parties to proceed quickly with the implementation of the Mitchell report's political recommendations, citing the need for a complete halt to settlement activity, in particular.
"Our message to our friends in Washington is that we should not allow much time to elapse between the establishment of a cease-fire and movement toward implementing other recommendations of the Mitchell report," he said.
Maher warned against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's demand for a longer "cooling-off period," arguing that this could endanger the cease-fire.
Ahead of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the region, Washington assured Cairo that it remains "strongly committed" to the peace process and intends to "help the parties move on as quickly as possible." Powell made these assurances during an hour-long meeting on Sunday between President Hosni Mubarak and US Middle East envoy William Burns, who was in Egypt after visiting Israel and before heading to Jordan.
"I emphasised the strong American commitment to full implementation of the Mitchell report as a package in all its aspects," Burns told reporters in Cairo, "so that we can sustain a full cessation of violence, build confidence, resume negotiations as quickly as possible."
However, critical issues will need to be resolved as the US attempts to make the Palestinians and Israelis implement the recommendations of the US-led fact-finding commission into the nine-month-old Intifada, as well as CIA director George Tenet's security plan reached earlier this month. The US aims to "stabilise the situation, restore a more normal life and create a sense of hope for the Palestinians living under very difficult circumstances," said Burns.
Burns continued that while "the situation is better now" than it was a few weeks ago, hard work is still needed to implement the two plans. According to the Tenet plan and Mitchell report, a truce would be tested during a six-week "cooling-off period," before a resumption of political negotiations.
"In the short-term [we] are trying to stabilise the security situation and ease the pressure which the Palestinians are living under," said the peace envoy. "It is not an easy task, but it is one that is very important."
Burns' visit to Cairo came as Sharon travelled to Washington, where on Tuesday he held his second meeting with Bush in three months. Sources said that the timing of the administration's announcement that it would increase its involvement in mediation, having been made prior to Sharon's visit, was significant. By indicating its new course of action ahead of meetings with the Israeli prime minister, the administration, suggest sources, may have been trying to send the message that its regional policy is made to serve American interests in the region and that it is made independently.
Reasons for this policy shift include fear that regional conflict might widen, a renewed concern for American interests in the area and the failure of American policy to persuade the peoples of the Middle East to accept new sanctions on Iraq.
In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Nabil Fahmi, the Egyptian ambassador to Washington, said that American policy had shifted from a hands-off approach to become more active, not only on security matters but also on political ones.
"The message we got from the Americans is that they are ready to be active on the political side. After all, we consider the security and political aspects to be linked," Fahmi said.
He added: "The American message was very clear, confirming that the US is out there to implement the recommendations of the international committee headed by former Senator George Mitchell in all its aspects. Moreover, the Americans affirmed that both sides agreed to implement the recommendations without reservations and without changes."
Fahmi told the Weekly it was impossible to ignore the political message behind Bush's decision to send Powell to the area. "There are many developments which account for the change in the US approach," he said. "First: the situation has changed on the ground. Violence has decreased considerably, and Powell confirmed that it was now appropriate for the US to move forward with a time-line for implementation of the recommendations as a package."
Mubarak said that during his visit to Washington in April, he urged American involvement in the peace process in order to ensure its progress. "I explained the situation to them. We spoke at length, and I argued that there must be an active US role in order for the process to reach peace," Mubarak told reporters on Tuesday. "The US has many interests in the region which will be affected if it does not push the peace process forward and help bring an end to the violence." He warned that current clashes could develop into "ugly terrorism, and we do not want to regress."
Fahmi stressed that the US had listened carefully to Cairo's views. "President Mubarak affirmed in so many messages and telephone conversations with President Bush that it was essential to move the political process forward and that the role of the US was very important and had to be activated," he said.
"The position taken by President Mubarak, along with his views and vision, encouraged the Bush administration to change its course quickly get involved in the political process."
And yet, Sharon has said in Washington that he refuses to start implementing the Mitchell recommendations because, he maintains, the Palestinians have not done enough to stop the violence.
"This is a moment of hope but it is also a moment of challenge," Maher said. "Challenge for the parties, for the United States, for the countries who want to have a voice of moderation to help the parties reach a point where they can successfully negotiate a final status which should result in a new deal to end occupation and have a fully sovereign Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital."
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