Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 16-17

Affairs of State

The Secretary Is Not Leaving!

By Eugene Bird

With a straight face, Secretary of State Colin Powell told National Security and Defense officials with whom he was meeting in late July that, despite all the rumors around Washington of his threat to leave over policy differences on the Middle East, he was not resigning. The officials froze—and then laughed at the secretary’s joke.

This relaxed attitude, coupled with a lifetime of not being a quitter in tough situations, probably will be needed in the future as Powell deals with the twin problems of Saddam Hussain and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The invasion of Iraq to depose the former is still seen in the State Department as a very bad idea. And, while privately admitting that Ariel Sharon is likely to be a worse problem by far than Yasser Arafat, most retired foreign service officers familiar with the Middle East see only a difficult period ahead for the secretary, who will need every bit of his abilities both at home and abroad to create and sustain rational U.S. Mideast policies.

Secretary Powell clearly lost the battle in the White House over calling indirectly for the disappearance of Arafat. He now is the point man for trying to rescue the situation by creating a consensus group among our allies and former enemies on what the next step should be in the Middle East. Arafat, after all, continues to receive foreign visitors in his Ramallah bunker. It is almost as if, 55 years after Hitler, Sharon and the colonists are driven by the same emotions toward Arafat as they were for the Nazi Führer. Arafat, however, is no candidate for suicide in his bunker.

Unanswered Questions

When Secretary Powell announced July 27, during his visit to India, that he intended to meet with some Palestinian leaders around Aug. 5 (see box), as a follow-up to meetings held with Israeli generals two weeks earlier and with King Abdullah Aug. 1, State Department correspondents tried to get the names of those Palestinian officials who would be meeting with Powell.

Would they be Palestinian Authority officials appointed by Arafat? Could the Department name them and say what the meetings were about—ending the violence or reformation of the Authority?

Four days after the secretary had announced the meeting, there still were no answers.

According to senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas, the president has surrounded himself with people like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Council Adviser Condoleezza Rice, sidelining Secretary Powell to diplomatic duties. While there is no doubt that the secretary of state is in a defensive position much of the time, he is fighting a rear-guard action against the extremely aggressive posture of the other Bush advisers.

The general thrust of the State Department’s effort has been to find a solution to the stalemate that Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Bush administration have fallen into over the past few months. It is clear that the secretary is the quarterback in the effort to find allies who would agree to support—or at least not oppose—the two new pillars of U.S. Middle East policy.

These are to get rid of Saddam Hussain and of Yasser Arafat. The question raised by Jordan’s King Abdullah when he visited London July 28, and presumably when he visited President Bush and Powell later that week, was which should come first, the problem of Iraq or the problem of Israel-Palestine? The Jordanian ruler opposed military action in getting rid of Saddam Hussain, at least until the Israel-Palestine problem was on its way to a solution.

Secretary Powell is using all his powers of persuasion, which are considerable, to gain a consensus among the “Quartet” formed earlier in the summer and consisting of Russia, the EU, the U.N. secretary-general and the American secretary of state. They consult frequently, and now are bringing the moderate Arab states into the consultations to find a common solution to both pillar problems.

Consular Uncertainties

The Department of State is likely to lose some of its functions, both at home and abroad, to the new cabinet position of Homeland Security. The long-term head of the State Department’s consular functions was forced to retire because of fallout from 9/11 concerning how the hijackers had received visas without face-to-face interviews. In fact, however, everyone agrees that had they had such interviews, they would have received visas anyway.

Visas for Saudi passport holders will now be available at the three posts in Saudi Arabia only if the individual appears before a consular officer. Some 60 thousand such visas were issued in the year 2000. The number of consular officers would have to be doubled at all three posts to allow for interviews in a reasonable time. Nor has the possibility of a separate Homeland Security interview yet been addressed.

It seems unlikely that the Department of State would lose its entire consular function to another Department. Should the new rules for Saudis be extended to many other nationalities, however, the State Department’s administrative budget would be strained significantly.

The Wrong Focus?

Washington’s focus on getting rid of Arafat one way or another has progressed to the point where the U.S. wants to wait until Arafat disappears before holding Palestinian elections. It is early in the game, of course, and much could happen between now and January 2003, the month scheduled for presidential and Palestine Legislative Council elections, with local elections to follow in February or March. Because, although it stands no chance against Arafat, Hamas might win those local elections, the administration is particularly concerned about holding any elections too early.

If there are no elections—at least no free elections reflecting Hamas’ 30 percent popularity rating in the polls—what are the alternatives? There would seem to be at least three lines of attack to reach the goal of ending the violence and restarting the peace process.

First, Secretary Powell could work on a broader coalition of both European and Arab states, informal as it might have to be.

Second, the U.S. could adopt a more activist bilateral role with the Sharon government and the Palestinian leadership. Powell’s meeting with chief Palestinian negotiator Sa’ab Erakat, Minister of Interior Abdul Razek Yehiyeh and Minister of Finance and Trade Maher Masri were examples of such a policy effort. Washington correspondents are calling such an approach shuttle diplomacy in place—that is, like Kissinger’s 13 trips to the Middle East to pry apart the Egyptians and Israelis, Powell would essentially negotiate with both parties, but from Washington.

The third option facing the secretary is a temporary intervention in Iraq. This would represent such a failure of American diplomacy, however, and unleash a concomitant strong anti-Americanism in all parts of the Middle East as to delay for years or decades any solution to the Israel-Palestine problem. This, of course, would suit Israel just fine.

However, as the first former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to serve as secretary of state since Alexander Haig 20 years ago, the administration must heed Powell on the subject of using military force in Iraq. (Haig, strangely enough, was among the worst secretaries of state in U.S. history. He was removed by another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, mostly as a result of Haig’s openly encouraging Sharon to go into Lebanon. That is not likely to happen to the highly popular Colin Powell.)

Secretary Powell certainly can be counted on to oppose any plan of using American forces against Arab nationalists entrenched in a major city like Baghdad.

He can be counted on as well to actively pursue creating an alliance with the Europeans and the moderate Arab states. While he may lose the debate within the administration, he will be needed even more after any U.S. action in Iraq.

As a long-time expert in the mediation of disputes points out, there are three choices for U.S. Middle East policy: conflict management, conflict resolution, or conflict suppression. The U.S. currently is engaged primarily in conflict suppression in Israel-Palestine, she believes, and infers that the U.S. remains more interested in short-term gains and the end of violence than in any real land-for-peace formula. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal, however, came away from meetings with President Bush, Colin Powell and others with exactly the opposite impression: that the administration believes Israel must end its occupation and get out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Is Helen Thomas correct when she says Secretary Powell is being sidelined to diplomatic duties? Almost certainly not. Not only is Colin Powell a veteran in these Washington turf wars, but he also is highly popular in Congress and with the American people—something Bush needs at the present time. This does not mean, however, that Powell will win all his battles. This is, after all is said and done, a time of war, and secretaries of state—
even former generals—lose some of their power and influence to the generals of the day.

SIDEBAR 1

Palestinian Delegation Receives Tea and Sympathy But No Real Support

They came, they communicated with the American public, and they left with the administration’s policy unchanged. On Aug. 8 Secretary of State Colin Powell hosted three Palestinian ministers, in the first visit to Washington by a formal Palestinian delegation since the Bush administration took office.

Suddenly, while President Bush was on his month-long Texas vacation, the three ministers met with the American secretary to talk about security, financial accountability, and an American involvement in a political solution.

It is not clear whether the Department of State initially refused to receive as a member of the delegation Sa’ab Erekat, Arafat’s chief negotiator with the Israelis and Palestinian Authority minister of local government. During the 1992 Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington Erekat earned the sobriquet “The Hammer.” Most recently, he made it clear on American television and in public appearances that Arafat was still the Palestinian leader, and said he had made that point to the secretary and NSC adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Erekat also left no doubt that only America could stop the violence, and told American audiences that there were more than 6,000 Palestinian police in Israeli jails and that all of the PA’s police stations and records of criminal activity had been destroyed.

When the second member of the delegation, Abdul Razek Yehiyeh, visited CIA headquarters to meet with George Tenet, he reportedly received promises of training and assistance to the Palestine security forces. He was informed, however, that everything depended on Israeli approval.

The delegation’s third member, Minister of Finance and Trade Maher Masri, brought the message on television and to Washington think tanks (covered by C-SPAN) that Palestinians need short-term emergency assistance.

During his Aug. 8 meeting with the delegation, the secretary of state picked up the telephone and arranged with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a three-person U.N. team to assess how to meet the Palestinians’ short-term needs. Minister Maher made the point repeatedly that only by opening up the Palestinian cities and freeing up commerce could the economy recover.

On Tues., Aug. 6—the day before the Palestinians’ arrival in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked during a briefing about Jewish colonies. He responded by suggesting that since Israel had acquired the territories in a war, they could do with them what they wished!

Although Secretary of State Powell did not respond directly, Minister Erekat suggested that before he arrived he was under the impression that America had one foreign policy, not two.

The opening to the Palestinians will be useful to both sides, even though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a speech castigating the entire leadership of the Palestinians as terrorists. As a certified sponsor of state-run terrorism, he should know. —E.B.

Eugene Bird, a retired foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.