June  9, 2002

Mubarak in an interview with Washington Post: "I am defending peace and stability"

    "Believe me, the violence will not stop . . . it will not happen," Mubarak said in an interview at Blair House. "You are dealing with human beings who cannot work, whose homes are destroyed. What do you expect them to do? . . . The only way to stop this is to give hope to the people."

    Mubarak, who later traveled to Camp David for talks with President Bush, is the latest in a stream of visiting Arab leaders who have urged the president to impose a political timeline for resolving the Middle East crisis.

    Although the White House has said it favors simultaneous movement on the political and security fronts, it has thus far implicitly backed Israel's insistence that an end to the violence must precede any political concessions.

    Mubarak said he agreed that the Palestinian Authority, particularly its security services, must be reformed for real peace to take hold. "Look, for the first time we have asked the Palestinians to make reforms. Whether they like it or not, they must," he said.

    "This is the demand of all the countries in the area. . . . The reforms should start quickly, and they have already started."

    But if they are to continue, he said, "there should be some flexibility on the Israeli side," including withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank.

    Only the United States, he said, is enough of a "heavyweight" to ensure that conditions are in place to create the Palestinian state Bush has said he supports.

    In their meeting at Camp David last night and again this morning, Mubarak said he would tell Bush that "we should work on the final situation," including setting a negotiating agenda and a date for statehood. "It should not be an open thing," he said.

    Although Mubarak had previously indicated he thought the statehood deadline should come next year, he said yesterday it is up to the Palestinians themselves. "They may say, we [will be] ready within one year, or within two years.

    But our role, and the role mainly of the United States as the key player, is to help the two parties to resume negotiations and solve their problems . . . to put an end to violence," he said.

    Bush told reporters yesterday that after he meets with Mubarak, and with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House on Monday, "I'll talk to the country about how I think we should move forward. . . . I don't know if it'll be a speech. Maybe a discussion. Could be a paper. I haven't decided the forum."

    White House aides quickly followed by saying that Bush has not decided to sign on to the deadline and negotiating agenda advocated by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the United States' leading Arab allies in the region, or any plan at all beyond his general statement of this spring.

    In an April 4 speech, Bush called on Palestinian, Arab and Israeli leaders to assume responsibility for stopping the violence and working toward a solution that eventually would lead to side-by-side Palestinian and Israeli states.

    The State Department has proposed that the United States support phased negotiations leading to statehood within three years, along with a complete overhaul of the Palestinian Authority's security services and an infusion of institution-building and democracy that ideally would result in the sidelining of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

    That plan is opposed by some in the Pentagon and Vice President Cheney's office. Bush has "made no decisions about whether or not he's going to do anything beyond what he's done to date in any forum," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "He'll decide when he wants to decide. He's still in the phase now of listening and gathering thoughts and ideas."

    Asked whether Bush was concerned about "getting his own voice out there" after months of listening to the ideas of Middle East leaders, Fleischer said, "Many of these leaders have been here before and return again, and I think it's just a sign of how much people like to talk to the president."

    Israel has adamantly rejected beginning political talks, let alone fixing a date for statehood, until violence against Israeli civilians stops. When he sees Bush on Monday, Sharon is expected to reiterate his refusal to negotiate with Arafat, whom he holds responsible for a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.

    After the latest suicide bombing, an attack claimed by the extremist Islamic Jihad that killed 17 Israelis on Wednesday, Israeli forces assaulted Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Yesterday, Israeli troops and armor moved into the town of Jenin, and early today Palestinians entered the settlement of Karmei Tsur, killing three Israelis and wounding four, the Associated Press reported.

    Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israeli Army Radio that Sharon would tell Bush that Arafat was doing nothing to prevent the terrorist attacks and would "insist on [Palestinian] reforms and that the entire international community must press the leader of the Palestinians to put things in order."

    Arafat also addressed the international community yesterday, calling for a halt to the Israeli incursions. "I am addressing this appeal to the whole international world to stop this fascism, this Nazism, this dirty work against our people," he said outside his largely demolished headquarters compound.

    In yesterday's interview, Mubarak voiced his support for the U.S. war against terrorism that began after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He said the United States had "made good progress" in its ongoing military operations against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

    But the problems of the Middle East, he said, risked spawning a "new generation of terrorism, which could spread everywhere in the world . . . against all the friends of the United States."

    "I am afraid," he said. "I may be wrong, but I am afraid . . . if there is no solution in the Middle East, we will be fighting a new kind of terrorism." At the same time, Mubarak said, Bush should resist entreaties by some in his administration to expand the war against terrorism with an attack on Iraq.

    "My personal advice is not to open two fronts at one time," he said. "We have to exert or make the maximum effort to solve the Palestinian problem, to calm down the situation. Because without that, to go to Iraq is very dangerous. Attacking Iraq will have very negative results on the public opinion in this part of the world."

    Mubarak said that he was not interested in defending either Sharon or Arafat. "I am defending peace and stability" in the region, he said. Arafat "is the leader of the Palestinians, elected democratically.

    You can't skip him out of the picture. We should work with him now, make the reform in the Palestinian Authority. He is the man who can make tough decisions" and offer concessions, once he is given room to operate.

    By severely limiting Palestinian movement in the West Bank with blocked roads, checkpoints and curfews, Mubarak said, Sharon is preventing the very action he says he wants to take place. The Israelis, he said, cannot continue "just saying 'reform' and hindering any step forward" toward it.

    Under the plan Mubarak has advanced, a theoretical state would be declared on all Palestinian land captured by Israel in 1967.

    In practice, that state could begin functioning in the much more limited territory now under the control of the Palestinian Authority, followed by a series of confidence-building measures, including Israeli withdrawal from land it has seized since the current round of fighting began in September 2000.

    Subsequent negotiations over exact borders and other outstanding issues, with a pre-established agenda and a fixed timetable, would lead toward eventual Palestinian sovereignty over the rest of the 1967 territory. 

By: Karen DeYoung and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 8, 2002; Page A01