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News, May 24, 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info |
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US readies team
to coordinate roadmap WASHINGTON - The United
States will send a group of intelligence and security officials to the
Middle East to coordinate the implementation of the "roadmap"
for Israeli-Palestinian peace, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said
on Friday. The team, the initial core of which will be about seven- to
10-people strong, is expected to leave for the region in the coming days
and base itself in Jerusalem as President George W. Bush presses Israel
and the Palestinians to put the roadmap into action, officials said.
Powell said members of the group were
being chosen now and would have a 'coordination role' in implementing
the steps in the roadmap which lays out measures to be taken for a
Palestinian state to be created by 2005. 'We see it as a small coordinating group
that would be coordinating our efforts ... to make sure that we are
talking to one another and we are getting started,' a senior State
Department official said. The team's arrival is expected after
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presents the roadmap to his cabinet
for aproval following his announcement on Friday that he accepted the
plan, albeit with serious reservations. That announcement was part of a carefully
coordinated diplomatic dance, negotiated over the past three days
between senior US and Israeli officials which required Washington to
first release a statement saying it recognized Irael's concerns and
would act on them. In that statement -- issued in the names
of Powell and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice -- the United
States said Israel's concerns are 'real' and pledged to 'address them
fully and seriously.' Sharon's acceptance of the roadmap came
just hours later. Despite the breakthrough -- which
may lead to a three-way summit between Bush, Sharon and new Palestinian
prime minister Mahmud Abbas -- Powell predicted difficulties ahead. And, speaking to reporters accompanying
him on his plane back from a G8 foreign ministers meeting in Paris, he
allowed that the most contentious issues had effecvely been put off to
salvage the roadmap in the face of Israeli resistance and continued
anti-Israel attacks by Palestinian extremists. 'It's easy to say 'why didn't you solve
all of this up front?',' Powell said before answering his own
question. 'Because you couldn't. You couldn't get started.' 'These are difficult issues that are
ahead,' he said, referring specifically to Israel's opposition to
allowing Palestinian refugees the right of return. 'Those kinds of concerns that would be so
severe that to try to deal with now would stop the process before it got
started, are the kinds of concerns that we're saying we will have to
address as we go forward,' Powell said. But he stressed that the word 'address'
-- used deliberately in his and Rice's statement -- did not pre-judge
siding with Israel over the Palestinians. ''Address doesn't necessarily mean make a
judgement, it means 'address',' Powell said. 'Address is very nice broad
term that I think more than adequately captures what we are anticipating
we will have to do as we go down the roads.' The senior State Department official, who
was also on Powell's plane, echoed Powell's comments about the use of
the word 'address' and Israel's concerns. 'There is no suggestion that all of them
are going to be satisfactorily resolved in the favor of one party or the
other,' the official said. 'They are all going to be addressed
to find a satisfactory solution that will serve the interests of both
parties,' he added.
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