U.S. Tells Arafat to Curb Violence or Risk Isolation

The Bush administration, signaling a turning point in its Middle East policy, put Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on notice Sunday that it will no longer deal with him unless he immediately closes down extremist organizations and arrests the militants behind escalating violence in Israel.

President Bush met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, moving up a meeting planned for today. Bush bluntly signaled that he was nearing the end of the line with the Palestinian leader, after 25 people were killed and about 220 injured by three suicide bombers this weekend.

“The president made clear what he demands of Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority: the immediate arrests of those responsible for these heinous acts and decisive action against the organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that support them,” said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council. “If Chairman Arafat is going to be a leader, it’s time to step up.”

Reflecting the extent of the administration’s exasperation with Arafat, another Bush aide, who is deeply involved in Washington’s efforts to broker a peace, said: “People here won’t take him seriously if he doesn’t act. We will no longer regard him as a partner. This is a defining moment for Yasser Arafat.”

As straightforward as the administration was Sunday about putting pressure on Arafat, it was also pessimistic that it could get Sharon to take the steps necessary to return to the peace table. It found itself instead urgently trying to salvage a heightened peace effort barely three weeks after it was begun.

Before greeting Sharon, Bush told reporters: “This is a moment where the advocates of peace in the Middle East must rise up and fight terror. Chairman Arafat must do everything in his power to find those who murdered innocent Israelis and bring them to justice.

“Now is the time for leaders throughout the world who urge there to be a peace to do something about the terror that prevents peace from happening in the first place,” the president said.

But Bush’s clout with Arafat and Sharon is limited; neither appears susceptible to U.S. pressure. And even as the White House presents the fight against terrorism as one in which allies must climb aboard or be considered part of the problem, it has little choice but to deal with the Palestinian leader.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he spoke to Arafat on Saturday evening, after the first two of the three bombings, and demanded a crackdown.

“It’s a moment of truth for Mr. Arafat,” Powell said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The secretary of State said the Palestinian leader acknowledged that the bombings amounted to attacks on his own authority.

“And I said to him, ‘Well, if that is the case, you need to respond accordingly. This cannot be just a “We’ll round up some suspects and that’ll be the end of it.” You’ve got to go beyond that,’ ” Powell said.

Bush announced a new Middle East peace effort last month in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly. He had intended to use the meeting with Sharon today to urge the hard-line prime minister to show more flexibility.

However, the horror of the weekend attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa left the president with little leverage over the prime minister. The violence focused the meeting directly on Arafat, rather than on the broader peace process.

Sharon hurried away to Andrews Air Force Base for a flight back to Israel immediately after the one-hour midday conference in the Oval Office with Bush, Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security advisor.

“Clearly the events of the past 48 hours have changed the agenda and focused instead on what Arafat needs to do,” said the Bush aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy.

“The main message going into the meeting was, how do we get Arafat to do what he needs to do? Events underscore that the onus is on Arafat. He really has to seize this moment,” the aide said, adding: “We don’t think this constellation of players will be able to make a real peace treaty.”

Administration officials see Arafat as the most viable Palestinian player at the moment, even as they bluntly say that if he’s not up to the challenge of controlling his followers, it might be time for him to step aside.

The weekend attacks have made Arafat “a weakened and noncredible leader” whose promises to crack down on radicals have been made “so often that he is no longer believed,” said William B. Quandt, a former National Security Council expert on the Middle East and now a professor at the University of Virginia.

But, Quandt said, there is no way that the United States or Israel can force Arafat from power.

“The Palestinians need new leadership, but there isn’t a chance that one can be imposed by force,” he said.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” said Arafat should be seen in the same unambiguous light in which the United States sees Osama bin Laden.

“A regime that both sponsors terrorism and performs terrorism has to be told, as you are telling the Taliban, ‘Either defeat terrorism or be defeated by it,’ ” he said.

As for Sharon, Bush’s insistence since Sept. 11 that the world must fight all terrorists undercuts whatever pressure the president might put on the Israeli leader to show restraint.

“Bush has a tendency to talk in pretty black-and-white terms on this,” Quandt said. He added that although there are differences between Arafat and Bin Laden, “that isn’t something you can tell the Israelis.”

The administration had hoped that weariness with the status quo and the growing economic costs might prod both sides to at least talk about a cease-fire.

Israel’s economy has taken such a hit that the United States estimates the Jewish state’s growth rate this year will be the worst since the 1950s, shortly after its founding.

And the average Palestinian’s income, which was about $2,000 a year before the current uprising began 14 months ago, is expected to be half that this year, while the unemployment rate in the Palestinian territories has climbed to more than 50%, according to U.S. officials.

Yet the Bush administration had also concluded that getting Sharon and Arafat to return to peace negotiations beyond a cease-fire was unlikely.

So, U.S. officials said, Bush made no demands of Sharon; nor did he try to talk the prime minister out of retaliatory strikes. Indeed, one official said, “It’s safe to assume from what was said that there will be a reaction” by Israel.

Bush promised Sharon that he would make a “maximum effort” to pressure Arafat and would ask other countries to tell Arafat to live up to his commitment to fight terrorism. U.S. officials have been in touch with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to urge them to use their influence on the Palestinian leader.

Some administration officials believe Arafat is capable of cracking down on the extremist groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Arafat is “not a particularly strong leader” and exercises a questionable degree of control.

So far, the Bush administration says, Arafat has been reluctant to take much political risk for the uncertain gain of working with Sharon.

If the United States has anything going for its effort to salvage the peace process, it may be the support of the Arab world.

In the administration’s view, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not getting much support from the mainstream Arab world right now.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.