CIA to host high-level Mideastern intelligence meeting Tenet planning regional intelligence meet in U.S.
Ha'aretz
May 22, 2002
By Aluf Benn and Nathan GuttmanCIA chief George Tenet plans to invite top Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi and Palestinian intelligence officials to Washington soon for consultations on a new security plan.
Israel is likely to send Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy as its representative. It is not yet clear who will represent the Palestinians. It is also not yet clear whether the intelligence chiefs will meet together or consult with Tenet individually. Tenet was due to come to the Middle East soon with a mandate from U.S. President George Bush to try and help remold Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat's security forces under one unified command. The American hope is to set up a security apparatus capable of stemming terrorism.
Tenet has asked to delay the mission for two reasons. First, he has not yet hammered out a complete concept of what he wants to do. Second, Israel has adamantly opposed the idea of his meeting with PA leader Yasser Arafat on grounds that Arafat is a terrorist whom the Israeli government refuses to deal with. Israel told Washington conditions "were not yet ripe" for a visit by Tenet.
American officials apparently think that holding the consultations in Washington will put pressure on the Palestinians, in general, to push through with reforms and on Arafat, in particular, since he will be left in the territories while his representatives are in Washington having contacts with the Americans. This can be viewed as the seedling of American contact with possible alternative candidates for leadership of the PA, thus upping the heat on Arafat.
As part of American efforts to broaden Middle East negotiations to include a wider range of Palestinians - and not just Arafat - Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns met on Friday with Mohammad Rashid, an aide to Arafat and senior official within the PA.
A State Department press release afterward said the two had discussed reforms and the reconstruction of the PA. A State Department spokesman said that the United States would continue to have contact with a variety of Palestinians.
Meanwhile in Beirut, Arab foreign ministers yesterday resolved to press ahead with the Saudi peace initiative but said it would be difficult to take part in a Middle East peace conference while Israel continued its "occupation, murder and sabotage" in the West Bank and Gaza.
"As long as this persists, it will be difficult to talk about a conference," said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa after the two-day session.
The meeting is the first since the Beirut summit of March 27-28 mandated the eight ministers and the PA to pursue the initiative, which offers Israel diplomatic and commercial relations with the Arab world in exchange for full withdrawal from territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
However, Moussa said he did not expect progress toward implementing the initiative because of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government. "This is evident from (their) measures, policies and practices," he told a Lebanese television channel. Israel's new chief of staff-designate Major General Moshe Ya'alon indicated he stood firmly behind the government's anti-Arafat stance, telling reporters and columnists during a familiarization trip to Washington last week that any attempt to reform the PA security structure as an anti-terror force while Arafat was at its helm was doomed to failure.
Ya'alon also told his interlocutors that it "is only a matter of time" until Israel goes into Gaza, which he said had become a refuge for terrorists and a hub for arms smuggling into the PA. He said he believed Secretary of State Colin Powell had made a mistake when he declared that there would be no replacement for Arafat in future negotiations.