Word: shultz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That tidy explanation smacks of comforting hindsight. The decisive events were far more complex: both Shultz and Arafat finally acted only under tremendous pressure from other nations. "He was sweating blood," said a Swedish diplomat who dealt with Arafat as the delicate backstage minuet was played out. The P.L.O. leader had the recalcitrant radicals in his organization pulling him back from the edge. Pushing him forward were Egypt and Jordan, as well as the Soviet Union, which "landed on Arafat like a ton of bricks," according to a Washington source. Reversing past policy, the Kremlin urged Arafat to seek talks...
What turned Shultz around? "He has a visceral hatred of Arafat," explained a senior U.S. diplomat. "But finally reality gained the upper hand, helped by a weight of pressure that he had probably not experienced before." The Secretary also felt gentle but firm nudges from George Bush to move the U.S. beyond its isolated stance of just saying no to every overture from the Palestinians...
Long before the tortuous, on-again, off-again negotiations of the final weeks, the changing situation in the Middle East had been pushing the U.S. toward a dialogue with the P.L.O. Shultz had repeatedly carried his American peace plan around the region in his own version of shuttle diplomacy last spring. The centerpiece of the plan was an end to Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, creation of an undefined "homeland" for Palestinians, and an international conference at which negotiations to achieve these ends would begin. But each effort ran up against Israeli objections to a conference even...
...Israel had hoped that Jordan's King Hussein would fill this role. But last July the King announced that he would no longer assume any legal or administrative responsibility for Arabs living in the occupied West Bank. Shultz conceded that when he had invited moderate Palestinians to meet with him in the past, no one had shown up. Insisted a Palestinian representative at the U.N.: "He finally came to the conclusion that the P.L.O. is the only interlocutor for the Palestinians...
Still, the statement was deliberately drawn to be ambiguous enough to prevent a walkout by George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh, two of the P.L.O.'s more radical leaders. Shultz declared that the P.L.O. wording was not clear enough on Israel's existence and did not flatly rule out all forms of terrorism...