Military

DATE=04/01/03

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=PALESTINIAN PEACE PLAN

NUMBER=6-12889

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: As Washington's preoccupation with the war in Iraq continues, some newspaper editorial columns are complaining the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is being shoved onto the back burner. We get a sampling now from V-O-A's ___________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Just before the allied invasion of Iraq, President Bush announced that he would soon publish the roadmap to resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. He hasn't, and several American newspapers are wondering what has happened to this new initiative.

Perhaps, as Northern New Jersey's [Bergen County] Record suggests, it was merely "A cynical ploy."

VOICE: In the fiery labyrinth of the Holy Land, where the Israelis and . Palestinians are locked in wrath and grief, a new way out has been promised. It's the diplomatic roadmap drafted late last year by .the United States . European Union, Russia, and [the U-N's] Kofi Annan - - that outlines a carefully calibrated process of disengagement, negotiation, and peace. But now that map is in danger of becoming a casualty of war, cast aside as a cynical ploy in the geopolitics of the assault on Iraq.

Mr. Bush laid down one condition for publication of the map: that the Palestinian Authority appoint a prime Minister with real powers to take over from the discredited Yasser Arafat. The authority has done just that, appointing moderate Mahmoud Abbas as the Prime Minister, and stripping Mr. Arafat of most of his former powers. Mr. Bush must now live up to his promise, and stand up for the road map to peace that he so publicly embraced.

TEXT: In California's capital, The Sacramento Bee is heartened by the independence shown by the Palestinian legislature in naming the new Prime Minister.

VOICE: Mahmoud Abbas is an old Arafat colleague but also a moderate who has called the Palestinian uprising a "historic mistake." Both the Bush and Sharon administration find him acceptable. . the independence already shown by those whom [Chairman] Arafat has long dominated suggests that real change may be at work within the Palestinian leadership.

TEXT: In Michigan, however, The Detroit News takes a much more pessimistic view of peace prospects, given recent events.

VOICE: That was quite a present the Palestinians offered the Iraqi people over the weekend. To show solidarity . the Islamic Jihad terrorist group dispatched a suicide bomber to blow up a café in the Israeli seaside city of Netanya. Thirty people were hurt. An Islamic Jihad spokesman described the bombing as a "gift" to the people of Iraq..

The gift arrived just as both Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were declaring a desire to push ahead rapidly with the Bush administration's road map for peace in the Middle East. . .[However] Making peace while there are those among the Palestinians who consider killing .Jews to be a gift from one Arab people to another is a lot to ask."

TEXT: In the opinion of The Dallas [Texas] Morning News, however:

VOICE: The conditions are ripe for Mr. Bush to release the long-delayed roadmap. . Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who has criticized Palestinian attacks on Israel as counterproductive [is filling] the new post of Palestinian Prime Minister. . President Bush promised [recently] . that he would give the road map to the parties as soon as the Palestinians named a Prime Minister with "real authority." It remains to be seen what Mr. Bush meant. [However] It befalls Mr. Abbas to quickly demonstrate his "real authority" .

TEXT: Finally, this summing up from Akron's [Ohio] Beacon Journal.

VOICE: Frustration over the Palestinian conflict in large measure fuels the terrorism that has taken root in the Middle East. A military success in Iraq will be of limited benefit if it does not offer the administration the leverage to orchestrate a finer diplomatic performance for peace.

TEXT: That concludes this editorial sampling on the fate of the latest peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

NEB/ANG