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Sunday Morning News

Powell Concludes Meetings With Sharon, Arafat

Aired February 25, 2001 - 8:28 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary of State Colin Powell has concluded a round of get-acquainted talks with both Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Powell then flew on to Jordan and he's scheduled to meet this hour with the king of Jordan.

Powell's visit has not been devoid of bloodshed and near where Powell met with Arafat in the West Bank, an Israeli settler was shot and seriously wounded.

CNN's Jerrold Kessel joins us now from Jerusalem with the latest on this news. Jerrold?

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, in fact, an ominous backdrop to those meetings that Colin Powell had this morning in Jerusalem with Israel's Prime Minister Elect Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Two, in two separate shooting incidents, two Israelis on the West Bank have been shot and wounded, apparently by Palestinian militants, and also near where Mr. Powell was meeting with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, one of a series of demonstrations by Palestinians who are protesting against the visit in the context of the recent U.S.-British air strikes near Baghdad, Palestinians saying that this is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East.

The fact that these demonstrations took place also in a sense chimes in with what seems to be the shift in emphasis in the U.S. approach to Middle East, its Middle East policy under the new Bush administration in contrast to that of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, with the emphasis being very much on a concept of regional stability and not just a total focus and preoccupation with trying to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal at virtually all costs.

And that seemed to be the focus that Mr. Powell was speaking this morning with Ariel Sharon, speaking very much about the need to contain Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the threat, as Mr. Powell put it, of the, coming from Iraq. He was asked about reports of -- from German intelligence that, to the effect that Iraq might even have nuclear capability within as little as a few years. And Mr. Powell said while he could not confirm those reports, it did underline the very message which he was bringing, he said, particularly to the United States' Arab friends in the region that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi threat was very much a real one. But even as he spoke of that, he was also addressing the question of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the violence and he heard from Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister Elect, that while he agreed that violence must be reduced on both sides, must be ended on both sides, Mr. Sharon saying the onus was on the Palestinians to do that.

Mr. Powell suggested that the onus was on both sides. Inasmuch as the Palestinians need to find a way to reduce the violence, the Israelis have to end what he called their economic siege of the West Bank because that, Mr. Powell said, did not in any way make it conducive for the violence to be brought down.

A difficult moment, he said. The key was finding which side had the key to going to the door first to unlock that question of how to reduce the violence. That very much Mr. Powell's concern at this stage, but concern linked into reducing the threat from Iraq and bringing about regional stability -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Jerrold Kessel live from Jerusalem, thanks.

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