Bush Calls For Removal Of Arafat

In a harsh rebuke to Yasser Arafat, President Bush said Monday the United States supported creating a provisional Palestinian state but only if there is a "new and different Palestinian leadership."

Mr. Bush urged the Palestinians to replace Arafat as their leader and adopt "a practicing democracy" that could produce an independent state within three years.

"Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born," Mr. Bush said at the White House.

The president gave his speech in the Rose Garden, the same place he announced in April that his administration would, at last, try to mediate the Israel-Palestinian crisis.

In his long-anticipated speech, Mr. Bush said "reform must be more than cosmetic changes or a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo" if the Palestinians are to fulfill their aspirations for a state alongside Israel.

Elections should be held by the end of the year for a legislature with normal authority and there also must be a constitution, Mr. Bush said as he set stiff conditions for a Palestinians state.

"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush never mentioned Arafat by name. But a senior aide, asked if the president meant that Arafat must go before the United States would back a provisional state, said: "We've been very clear that we think there has been significant problems with the Palestinian leadership."

Late Monday, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat welcomed President Bush's speech Monday as a "serious effort to push the peace process forward" in an official statement that ignored his calls for new Palestinian leadership.

Mr. Bush said borders and certain aspects of the sovereignty of the new state would be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement. He called on Israel to pull back to its positions before Sept. 28, 2000, basically clearing out of 40 percent of the West Bank.

The aides said if the conditions are met, a provisional Palestinian state could be established in 18 months and then made permanent in about three years as part of a final Middle East settlement.

Mr. Bush also demanded that Israel stop building homes for Jews on the West Bank and in Gaza. Ultimately, he said, Israel should agree to pull all the way back to the lines it held before the 1967 Mideast war.

Both Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon welcomed the president's remarks, finding favorable elements.

Arafat said the speech represented "a serious effort to push the peace process forward," while Sharon's office said "genuine reforms and a new leadership" could clear the way to a diplomatic settlement.

Terms of a provisional state and its international functions were left for negotiations between a reformed Palestinian leadership and Israel.

Mr. Bush said the United States, European Union, World Bank and International Monetary Fund stand ready to help oversee reforms in Palestinian finances.

"And the United States, along with our partners in the developed world, will increase our humanitarian assistance to relieve Palestinian suffering," he pledged.

His speech drew support from Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress. Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle said it was "a clear and powerful statement of American principles, principles that a number of us have been articulating for several months."

Secretary of State Colin Powell already was in consultation with Arab and Palestinian officials as Mr. Bush's plan was developed and is likely to return to the region for direct talks, a senior administration official said.

Within the Bush administration, there were reservations about announcing the plan for Palestinian statehood. Some senior officials questioned going ahead while Israel was smarting from terror attacks and had its forces on the offensive on the West Bank and in Gaza. Others were skeptical that Palestinian leader Arafat is capable of harnessing the Palestinian militants who brought the region to a boil with suicide bombings.

On April 4, Mr. Bush became the first president to endorse statehood for the Palestinians. Yet he has shunned Arafat and has questioned his leadership and his motives repeatedly.

The result is a proposal for a start-up state, without borders, with progress toward normal statehood conditioned each step on the way to democratic reform.

The limited nature of statehood irked some Palestinians and other Arabs.

"A state is a state, and you cannot be provisionally pregnant, and you cannot have a provisional state," Nabil Shaath, a senior member of Arafat's Cabinet, said Sunday on CNN television's "Late Edition."

The hardest issues — such as final borders, the control of Jerusalem and the return of refugees — would be left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.