June 5, 2002

Mubarak to New York Times: "We warned Washington of terrorist operations" 

In an interview, Mubarak said he would urge the administration to apply international pressure to the Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations.

He said he was even prepared to follow in the Footsteps of Anwar el-Sadat and travel to Israel, but not while killing continued and only if it would help clinch a deal. Otherwise, he said, "I am going to be insulted from here to here," gesturing from head to toes with his hand.

"I think to declare a state just theoretically like this and then to sit and negotiate what would be the borders, what about Jerusalem - I think it may work," Mr. Mubarak said. On the other hand, declaring a state on a fraction of the Palestinian lands seized by Israel in 1967 would only perpetuate tensions and lead to more "terror and violence," he said.

Speaking in English on Sunday at the presidential palace, which was ringed by tight security in a city flowering under the summer red of acacia trees, Mr. Mubarak said his proposals would be far more detailed than those outlined by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

That proposal was adopted by nations attending an Arab summit meeting in Beirut in March; it called for Israel to withdraw from all lands seized in the 1967 war in exchange for full normalization of relations with all Arab nations. Mr. Mubarak, who arrives in Washington on Wednesday and appeared eager to resume a pivotal position in the quest for Middle East peace, did not attend that March meeting.

He has supported the Saudi initiative in public while disparaging it in private. In the interview, he indicated that he thought it was based on recycled ideas and failed to provide a detailed way forward. He said he planned to address this deficiency with Mr. Bush when they meet in Washington and at Camp David on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Mr. Mubarak made plain that he considered the search for Middle East peace far more important than the Bush administration's quest for a change of power in Iraq.

His proposal differs from others in that it would confer statehood on all Palestinian lands recognized by the United Nations before- not after - many difficult issues of exact boundaries, refugees, the division of Jerusalem and the dismantling of Israeli settlements are addressed.

The Egyptian president suggested that the proposal would give the Palestinians hope of achieving a state; a hope he indicated had recently been dashed by the actions of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.

"This may be one of the proposals which will lead the two parties to sit and negotiate," he said. "Our intention is to lower the tension, and any idea which lessens the tension and violence, I support it, but it

That proposal was adopted by nations attending an Arab summit meeting in Beirut in March; it called for Israel to withdraw from all lands seized in the 1967 war in exchange for full normalization of relations with all Arab nations.

Mr. Mubarak, who arrives in Washington on Wednesday and appeared eager to resume a pivotal position in the quest for Middle East peace, did not attend that March meeting.

He has supported the Saudi initiative in public while disparaging it in private. In the interview, he indicated that he thought it was based on recycled ideas and failed to provide a detailed way forward. He said he planned to address this deficiency with Mr. Bush when they meet in Washington and at Camp David on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Mubarak made plain that he considered the search for Middle East peace far more important than the Bush administration's quest for a change of power in Iraq.

His proposal differs from others in that it would confer statehood on all Palestinian lands recognized by the United Nations before—not after—many difficult issues of exact boundaries, refugees, the division of Jerusalem and the dismantling of Israeli settlements are addressed.

The Egyptian president suggested that the proposal would give the Palestinians hope of achieving a state; a hope he indicated had recently been dashed by the actions of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.

"This may be one of the proposals which will lead the two parties to sit and negotiate," he said. "Our intention is to lower the tension, and any idea which lessens the tension and violence, I support it, but it should be on a fair basis.”

"To leave the problem of the Middle East to Arafat and Sharon alone, you will get nowhere," he said. "It should be a heavyweight country like the United States that should try to interfere, try to listen to this and that and in the end make the two parties make a conclusion."

On the Israeli side, Mr. Sharon has criticized a plan, pushed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, that calls for immediate Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state in the territory already under Palestinian control, followed by a year of negotiations over the precise boundaries.

But some right-wing members of Mr. Sharon's party fear that he secretly favors the plan as a way of relieving international pressure on Israel while yielding only a tiny Palestinian state, without a capital in Jerusalem.

It is for just those reasons that most Palestinian leaders, including Yasir Arafat, have criticized that approach. They worry that negotiations would become protracted once even a limited state was declared, and that international attention would shift elsewhere.

Mr. Mubarak's plan addresses those Palestinian concerns two ways: by demanding immediate commitment to returning to the 1967 borders and by calling for a specific timeline for arriving at them.

He also expressed the strong view that although Mr. Arafat could not be removed by anyone but the Palestinian people, his failures as a leader of the Palestinian Authority created an opportunity to press him to make compromises he seemed unwilling to make at the Camp David meeting in 2000 and at the very end of the Clinton administration.

At that time, a final settlement was proposed that would have granted Palestinians almost all of the lands taken by Israel in 1967, along with sovereignty over East Jerusalem and compensation for refugees. Under those plans, some of the refugees could have been reunited with Arab relatives in Israel, but most would have become residents of the new Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

"I am not saying Arafat is the best man, no," Mr. Mubarak said. "But we have to use Arafat in this present situation. Arafat would be much more flexible than ever before after this period of the past year."

"I think we have to support him for the time being," he said, adding that "then after that, maybe after one year, he may appoint some other" Palestinian leader "to take over" while assuming a more ceremonial position.

On Iraq, Mr. Mubarak warned that America faced "big losses" if it attacked now.

"Using force will create a hell of a lot of problems in the public opinion, it will make people very furious," he said. "We will have a heavy burden here to settle down the situation among the people. There will be violence in the whole area against the United States."

He suggested that the United States needed to address its "bad image" in the Arab world by demonstrating a tangible commitment to a Palestinian state, an idea that Mr. Bush endorsed for the first time last fall, to try to calm the violence that is threatening to destabilize the region.

The government of Egypt is among several in the Arab world under pressure from the young and the unemployed to do more to ease economic hardship, be it through more democracy or greater devotion to Islam. For these malcontents, ties to the United States bring only a repugnant association with American support for Israel.

A Bush administration official said it was not surprising that Mr. Mubarak would float such an idea at a time when Mr. Bush himself has recently referred flatly to "Palestine," as if a state already existed, and when Foreign Minister Peres has discussed similar ideas with Palestinians.

"He knows this discussion is out there, and it makes sense for him to come and make a pitch," the official said.

In the interview, Mr. Mubarak said he would press Mr. Bush to lie out a framework, using some new ideas for compromise on the crucial issues of dividing Jerusalem, returning Palestinian refugees and delineating final borders.

The framework for the negotiations should be set, he said, only after extensive American consultations with Israeli and Arab leaders by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

This could take months, he added, implying that there was no need to rush into an international conference.

"Before declaring their proposal, there should be an active discussion," he said. "The U.S. should listen to the parties and then find a good formula. You will not satisfy the needs of both sides, 100 percent; it is impossible."

At that conference, the United States, Arab and Israeli leaders and representatives of the United Nations, Russia and the European Union could set a schedule aimed at a peace treaty sometime after the 2004 presidential elections in the United States, Mr. Mubarak suggested.

That schedule could help reduce the political risks for Mr. Bush, whose actions in the Middle East are certain to invite intense Congressional scrutiny.

But such a delay might be problematic if Mr. Bush did not win re-election in 2004 and his successor had different ideas.

In the months before any declaration of a Palestinian state, Mr. Mubarak said, Arab leaders and American and Israeli officials could observe how Mr. Arafat carried out the security and political reforms he has promised.

The Egyptian president sent his chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, to Mr. Arafat last week for a progress report.

Mr. Mubarak seemed doubtful that Mr. Sharon would accept his proposal or engage in serious negotiations to create a Palestinian state. But he said that if a political fight broke out in Israel over whether to enter peace talks, he would be willing even to visit Israel to help break eventual deadlock.

"Forget about visiting Israel when there is tension and people being killed here and there," Mr. Mubarak said. "I am going to gain nothing. I am going to create problems in this country, and in the whole Arab world."

But, he added, "if I am sure it would succeed, that is something different, I would consider it."

Though Mr. Mubarak has a dim view of Mr. Sharon as a peacemaker, he said it was necessary to keep in touch, as he said he did last month when warning Mr. Sharon directly against an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

"The message went to him at midnight on the fax straight to his office," Mr. Mubarak said, adding that he had feared a "massacre." "He didn't reply until now, but I think he understood the situation."

The Egyptian leader brushed aside questions about the need for greater openness and democracy in the Arab World, refusing to discuss the trial of a prominent political activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and asserting that, in Egypt, "we have all kinds of democracy."