11 June 2002
Three Tracks of Mideast Strategy Must Proceed Concurrently
(Boucher says political, security, economic issues "go hand in hand")
(1380)
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the three tracks of
the U.S. Middle East peace strategy, comprising political
negotiations, security cooperation, and Palestinian institution
building, must proceed together because they are "mutually
reinforcing."
Speaking at the June 11 State Department press briefing in Washington,
Boucher said the proposed Middle East ministerial meeting to be held
in summer 2002 would be one of the elements moving all three tracks
forward.
"This is not necessarily some extended negotiating session that will
produce the final results. Nor is it going to end up being merely a
rubber stamp of something that's been agreed beforehand. At the same
time, we do envisage going into the conference with some ideas," said
Boucher.
With regards to Palestinian political reform, Boucher emphasized that
the goal of the United States "is not to choose the Palestinian
leadership."
"Our goal is to help the Palestinians build a responsible institution
of government, the institutions of government that will be needed for
a Palestinian state, which can be created through negotiation. Our
goal is to work with Palestinians themselves, the voices in the
Palestinian community, who want to see reform. Our goal is to see
proper accounting for the funds that might be used to help rebuild the
economy in the Palestinian Authority. Our goal is to see reform of the
Palestinian security institutions, so that they can take
responsibility for security and stay clean and not have ties to
terrorists."
"Those are our goals," said Boucher, "not to choose a particular
leadership."
Following are excerpts form the June 11 State Department briefing with
Richard Boucher:
(begin excerpt)
QUESTION: I don't want to overdo what seems to be a misperception
about planning for a conference, but is it a semantic problem? In
other words, you have a foreign ministers meeting in mind, not a
summit, and that seems to be the misunderstanding, that it's not a
summit?
MR. BOUCHER: Yes. The President keeps getting asked about summits, and
it's not a summit. It's a ministerial meeting, to be chaired on our
side by Secretary Powell. We think this is an important part of moving
forward on peace in the Middle East. We need to move forward, as we
say, on all three tracks of our strategy: the political, the security,
and the economic and institution-building. And those things go hand in
hand. We've talked before about how they're mutually reinforcing, and
a ministerial meeting in the summer is one of the ways to move forward
on those issues. That's what we're still thinking about; that's what
we're planning; and that's what we're discussing in all these series
of discussions that we've had with various leaders.
QUESTION: Can I just follow that up quickly? The Egyptians -- not the
President, but his advance man -- were speaking, as you've heard so
many times before, about how it has to be well prepared, but it
sounded like he wanted the outcome known in advance, so that it would
succeed. Do you envision going into a conference with sort of ideas
not fixed, and people just batting ideas back and forth?
MR. BOUCHER: I think --
QUESTION: Remembering Madrid, for instance.
MR. BOUCHER: Yes. First of all, you have to remember that this is one
of the elements of moving forward on all three of these tracks. This
is not necessarily some extended negotiating session that will produce
the final results, nor is it going to end up being merely a rubber
stamp of something that's been agreed beforehand.
At the same time, we do envisage going into the conference with some
ideas. The President now has had a chance to listen to any number of
leaders from the region. The Secretary -- he sent the Secretary out to
the region. He sent the Director of Central Intelligence out to the
region; Ambassador Burns has been out there very recently. We have
their debriefs. The Secretary mentioned to you the Foreign Minister of
Saudi Arabia will be here later this week.
So with all those views, with all this information, and granted
sometimes contradictory views and contradictory pieces of information,
we need to put together some of our ideas. And as the Secretary said,
the President will lay it out when he is ready.
QUESTION: Are you suggesting that perhaps in the future, to alleviate
any confusion, that people asking the President or others at the White
House should refrain from using the word "summit," as it seems to be
confusing to them over there?
MR. BOUCHER: Well --
QUESTION: Or are you suggesting that it's the reporters who are
getting it wrong?
MR. BOUCHER: The reporters always get it wrong, I'm sure. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Well, would that clear it up if people started talking about
a ministerial conference when asking people at the White House about
it?
MR. BOUCHER: This is an idle debate, Matt. I'm not trying to blame it
on the reporters or the use of one word. I'm trying to say that when
--
QUESTION: That's exactly what you did. You said the President was
asked about a "summit," not a ministerial conference.
MR. BOUCHER: No, that's not exactly what I did, Matt, and I would
invite you to read the transcript, first of all. And second of all,
I'm not asserting that any lack of clarity in the news is because the
reporter asked the wrong word in the question, but I do want to make
clear that we have been consistent on this in talking about it as a
ministerial meeting, and we'll continue to do that.
QUESTION: Could you clarify perhaps on -- is the meeting going to be
used to help put in place conditions in the Palestinian Authority to
move forward, or do those conditions need to be in place before the
meeting itself can move forward? Yesterday the President said the
timing isn't right, the conditions aren't there yet, and no one has
confidence in the emerging Palestinian government.
MR. BOUCHER: All those things are true. As we go forward, as we look
at all these views and hear back from others, we do think that reform
needs to proceed; that reform is one of the tracks that we need to
move forward on. As the White House Spokesman said yesterday, it goes
hand in hand with the other things. We've talked here frequently about
how a reform is part and parcel of all these different steps, of
proceeding on the economic track, on the political track, on the
security track. And there is in fact a strong movement within the
Palestinian Authority to carry out reform.
But all this proceeds we would say concurrently, hand in hand --
whatever -- but it needs to proceed together so that the steps that
provide the political horizon can be reinforced by steps that provide
real security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
QUESTION: Is the meeting one of those steps, or are the steps leading
up to the meeting? I don't think that's clear.
MR. BOUCHER: I think the meeting is one of those steps in terms of
advancing this whole process, this whole three-part strategy.
-----
QUESTION: Does the United States plan to use influence to change the
Palestinian leadership?
MR. BOUCHER: Our goal is not to choose the Palestinian leadership. Our
goal is to help the Palestinians build a responsible institution of
government, the institutions of government that will be needed for a
Palestinian state which can be created through negotiations. Our goal
is to work with Palestinians themselves, the voices in the Palestinian
community, who want to see reform. Our goal is to see proper
accounting for the funds that might be used to help rebuild the
economy in the Palestinian Authority. Our goal is to see reform of the
Palestinian security institutions so that they can take responsibility
for security and stay clean and not have ties to terrorists.
Those are our goals, not to choose a particular leadership. Chairman
Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and we'll work with
him in that capacity. One of the things that he needs to lead on is to
build the institutions that can be reliable and responsible support
for a future Palestinian state.
(end excerpts)
(end excerpt)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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