Bush camp cautious on post-Arafat support

WASHINGTON -- Despite a flurry of hopeful signs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the death of Yasser Arafat, the Bush administration is keeping a cautious distance from the emerging Palestinian leadership, saying that future political and economic support will depend on whether a new Palestinian president can rein in militant groups.

A State Department official involved in the issue said negotiations on a final peace deal could take at least a year or two to begin in earnest, and maybe much longer. To earn renewed US political and financial support for such a process, the official said, the new Palestinian president to be elected Jan. 9 will need to take concrete steps to end terrorist attacks against Israel, reform Palestinian institutions, and root out corruption.

"As quickly as they are able to move, we would move equally quickly to reinforce those steps," the official said, on condition of anonymity. But "if a government is elected that does not view the peaceful resolution of this conflict as their main priority, then there is going to be a limit on what we can do."

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official echoed the American stance and also said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to delay "final-status" talks until Israel completes construction of a controversial barrier in the West Bank, a project that could take up to two years.

These positions were expressed amid a recent series of encouraging statements and gestures of good faith from all sides since Arafat's Nov. 11 death that would have been unthinkable a few months ago: Egypt is seeking to negotiate a cease-fire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. The leading Palestinian candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, is calling for an end to the four-year-old intifadah, or uprising.

Sharon is releasing millions in tax revenue to the coffers of the Palestinian Authority, and foreign donors are holding out the prospect of fresh funding for Palestinian institution-building if the peace process advances.

But the cautious sentiment from inside the State Department underlines how substantial the obstacles remain to advancing beyond the warmer rhetoric of recent weeks. It also exposes the gap in expectations between the sides, with Palestinians hoping for a quick resumption of full peace talks in the months after the election.

Even after the vote, US officials make no specific promises about what kind of assistance they would offer a new Palestinian government in the form of monetary aid, assistance in rebuilding security forces, or political pressure on Israel. Part of the caution, US officials said, comes from fears that a large and visible US role would raise accusations of interference and cause a backlash against moderates.

The major focus now is on ensuring that the electoral process is credible, said David McCloud, director of the USAID office of Middle East affairs, who said the agency is releasing $2.5 million in technical and material assistance for the elections through IFES, an international nonprofit democracy organization, and $1.2 million more to pay for 70 American monitors through the National Democratic Institute.

The US contribution to the election effort will be dwarfed by that of the European Union, which is expected to fund an estimated 85 percent of total international support.

"We're interested in the elections coming off as well as they can come off," McCloud said. "After the election the United States will look and decide what, if any, more assistance would be appropriate."

But the US assistance that many Palestinians want most is political pressure on Israel. Palestinians believe peace efforts will move ahead only if Washington, Israel's most important ally, leans heavily on the Jewish state to freeze Jewish settlements and halt all offensive military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip once the new Palestinian leader gets militants to stop their attacks.

"We can get all the factions to agree to a truce, but it won't last long if Israel continues its assassinations and raids," said Palestinian legislator Nabil Amr, who is regarded as one of Abbas's closest advisers. "We need the United States to press Israel in the right direction."

Officials in Sharon's office said last week that Israel was willing to refrain from most military activity once Palestinians halt all violence. But they said the army would continue striking at militants planning attacks, a formula that Palestinians say will quickly scuttle any truce.

The precise terms of a cease-fire could be resolved in negotiations when the new Palestinian government establishes a Cabinet. But Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Sharon, said Israel would restrict the talks to security matters and to Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza, without engaging Palestinians on broader disputes such as the borders of a future Palestinian state, the fate of Jerusalem, and the plight of Palestinian refugees.

"For one thing, Sharon wants to wait until the security fence is completed before permanent status talks begin," Shoval said in an interview. "That way, [the barrier] would be more or less a line of reference for negotiations on the final border."

Israel says the 300-mile barrier is aimed at keeping suicide bombers out of the Jewish state. But much of it is being built on land within the West Bank, and thus east of the 1967 line that Palestinians say should serve as the border between their future state and Israel.

Shoval said completion of the fence would strengthen Israel's claim to some of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which the barrier envelops. In the meantime, he said, Sharon was willing to recognize the creation of a Palestinian state under provisional borders probably on about half the West Bank.

But Palestinians view that gesture as a trap. Ed Abington, a former US ambassador in the region and current consultant to the Palestinian Authority, said putting off final-status talks would strengthen extremists on the Palestinian side.

"My feeling is that if the Bush administration treats this as just another issue, it won't last and the gains that are being made by the moderates will fall away," Abington said.

In recent weeks, US foreign policy veterans including Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, and former president Bill Clinton have urged President Bush to seize the moment in the Middle East by signaling his commitment to resolving the conflict.

In a rare gesture of support for Palestinians last month, Bush signed a presidential waiver releasing $20 million in direct assistance directly to the Palestinian Authority, but the money is earmarked for payment of Palestinian debts to Israeli utility companies, according to State Department officials. Because of US fears of corruption in the Palestinian Authority -- and funneling of assistance to militants -- assistance is almost always routed through nongovernmental organizations.

The only other time Bush has agreed for money to be paid into the account of the fledgling Palestinian government was in 2003, when Abbas briefly served as prime minister.

In an address earlier this month in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Bush made it clear that the onus for peace is on the Palestinians.

"Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a settlement," he said. "This approach has been tried before without success. As we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy."