Word: yasser
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...liners and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Days after Powell left for Afghanistan in early January, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld teamed up to try to shut down the mission of Powell's Middle East envoy General Anthony Zinni and cut off ties with Yasser Arafat. In a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, the two hawks argued that after the seizure of an arms-laden boat headed from Iran to the Palestinian Authority, all ties to Arafat should be cut. "[Cheney and Rumsfeld] made...
...Israel, every day is September 11. A new terror attack, more dead and wounded, more lives shattered. And then the inevitable statement by the Israeli government blaming Yasser Arafat - usually accompanied by a retaliatory strike on one of his police stations, or an incursion into a West Bank town to arrest or kill some militants. And, of course, a routine statement from the White House demanding that Chairman Arafat do more to stop terrorism, and recusing the U.S. from any role until he does. Then, a new day dawns and, inevitably, a new outrage fills our TV screens...
TIME: You have met Yasser Arafat many times. Did President Bush ask your advice about his refusal to meet Arafat at the United Nations General Assembly? BLAIR: No . . . Of course we discussed the Middle East, but I'm not in the position of giving advice. We will have discussions. He will say things to me, and I will say things to him. By the nature of those discussions, you shouldn't talk to journalists about them...
President Bush is deeply disappointed in Yasser Arafat. The feeling, of course, is mutual, but Arafat has a lot more to lose. The National Security Council met Friday to consider the future of its relationship with the Palestinian Authority, and initial signs are that the administration is inclined to support Ariel Sharon's thesis that the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East is Arafat himself. And also to act on that view, by cutting ties with Arafat and recusing Washington from its mediation role, giving Sharon carte blanche to pursue a military-driven solution...
...reach. There's a grim consensus in Palestinian society today that the al-Aqsa intifada has achieved little for their people - but that doesn't stop the militants who flip the equation by asking what will be achieved by yielding now, in the absence of any Palestinian gains. And Yasser Arafat, pinned down in his office in Ramallah by Israeli tanks, appears to be simply bobbing on the waves of chaos swelling all around him now, his ability to rein in the militants increasingly in question even if that were his unambiguous intention...