Iraqi weapons Powell's main Mideast worry

KUWAIT - United States Secretary of State Colin Powell spent yesterday hearing Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the violence between them and came away saying the problem he really wanted to solve was Iraqi weapons.

Flying in the face of the Arab view that the Arab-Israeli conflict should be Washington's priority, he told reporters on his plane to Kuwait that the violence was a complication because it gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an audience.

He also veered towards the Israeli view that a reduction in violence was a precondition for resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which ground to a halt shortly before Likud hawk Ariel Sharon won Israel's premiership elections on February 6.

"It's going to be some time before they can get back to the negotiations, it seems to me," he said.

Powell began his three-day tour of the Middle East with a mission to rebuild the consensus for a form of United Nations sanctions that prevents Iraq acquiring weapons of mass destruction but denies Baghdad the chance to argue that the sanctions deprive the Iraqi people of food and medicine.

But in Egypt on Sunday, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said he did not agree with Powell that Iraq was a threat to Egyptian security. Moussa said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was too important to take second place to any other issue.

In Israel and the Palestinian territories yesterday, Powell delved into Arab-Israeli disputes, the primary focus of the Clinton Administration that left office on January 20.

But between Jordan and Kuwait later in the day, the Secretary of State did not indicate he was in a hurry to play the same intense mediation role that Bill Clinton played in the final months of his presidency.

He said the Israelis and Palestinians were "at the beginning of a long hallway that is waiting for you and at the end is negotiations for peace."

"We've got to get the door open. It's going to take two keys. Both of you are going to have to turn and both of you are going to figure out who sticks the key in first, or you do it together, or how do you do it.

"All we can hope right now, and what I think is a necessary first step and precondition to improvement, is a reduction in the level of the violence."

Asked about the link between the US campaign to contain Iraq and its attempts to bring about Middle East peace, he said: "They are all linked. To the extent that Saddam Hussein can play on that conflict and perform these gestures of solidarity with those folks who he sees as suffering in the West Bank and Gaza, it complicates the whole situation.

"It gives him an audience to play to. That makes it even more important that we focus on the problem we are really trying to solve, and that's weapons of mass destruction, and deny him the chance to appeal to the Arab street."

But Powell did upset the Israelis by using the word "siege" - the Palestinian phrase - when he called for an end to Israeli restrictions on movements between Israel and the Palestinian territories, imposed by Israel in the name of security but seen by Palestinians as a form of collective punishment.

At a news conference with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah, he said that economic pressure on the Palestinians did not help security.

Asked to elaborate on the word "siege," he said: "If people are not able to get to their jobs, if they are not able to earn a living, they become more frustrated. Frustration leads to anger. Anger leads ultimately to acting out that anger in violence."

Just hours after Powell's call, the Israeli Army announced it would remove military checkpoints dividing the Gaza Strip in two. The Army said it had cancelled the decision to cut Gaza into two sections because of "increasing humanitarian cases and requests for passage between the two parts."

The US has repeatedly asked the Israeli Government to release to Arafat's Palestinian Authority $US54 million ($124 million) in tax receipts it has withheld as a form of leverage.

- REUTERS

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