For Israel, the Road to Peace Requires ’10 Days of Quiet’

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused Tuesday to proceed on a U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan until the region is “completely quiet” and free of bloodshed for 10 days.

Sharon laid down that timetable during an hourlong meeting at the White House with President Bush in which the prime minister detailed Palestinian violations of the cease-fire and the president insisted repeatedly that progress was being made in the Middle East.

“I made clear that when violence and terror are over . . . we will insist on 10 days of absolute quiet, and if there are 10 days, we will gladly move to a cooling-off period,” Sharon said. Previously, he had talked about a violence-free period but had not spelled out the 10-day concept.

“The Israeli position is that we can negotiate only . . . [after] a full cessation of hostilities, terror, violence and incitement. Otherwise, I don’t think we’ll be able to reach a peace” to which all parties can commit, Sharon said.

Bush urged Sharon to resist the impulse to launch military strikes against the Palestinian Authority, and he declared during an Oval Office photo session: “Progress is in inches, not in miles. But, nevertheless, an inch is better than nothing.”

The second meeting this year between Bush and Sharon pointed up their differences over how to advance the fragile cease-fire negotiated by CIA Director George J. Tenet two weeks ago.

Further reflecting the Bush administration’s growing role in the Middle East, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell left for the region hours after the Bush-Sharon meeting.

Powell’s mission, Bush said, is to “try to advance the process, to make peace more real.”

The president’s meeting with Sharon was one of three he held Tuesday with a foreign leader, in a week dominated by foreign policy and diplomacy.

Earlier in the day, Bush met with South African President Thabo Mbeki and Peruvian President-elect Alejandro Toledo. On Thursday, Bush is to meet with the leaders of Ghana, Mali and Senegal. On Saturday, he will host new Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at Camp David, Md.

The tenuous Middle East truce has raised hopes of an end to nine months of violence. During that time, about 600 people have been killed and thousands more injured.

Amid the continued acts of violence on both sides, Sharon has come under intense pressure in Israel to abandon his policy of restraint and to retaliate--a situation acknowledged by Bush.

“I understand the pressure he is under,” the president told reporters before the meeting.

But with photographers capturing a few minutes at the beginning of the talk, Bush repeatedly asserted that progress was being made. Sharon replied pointedly, “One must understand that if last week we had five dead, it’s like the United States, Mr. President, having 250 killed, or maybe even 300 people killed by terror.”

A moment later, Sharon detailed some of the violence inflicted upon Israelis and urged Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to call for an end to such bloodshed.

“I’ve said it very clearly. Israel will not negotiate under fire and under terror. We’ve said it because if we do that, we’ll never reach peace,” Sharon said.

Briefing reporters at the White House afterward, a senior administration official who asked not to be named said, “The president reaffirmed his judgment . . . that the cease-fire has gained some momentum but still remains extremely fragile” and that “much more work needs to be done.”

Bush called for “a 100% effort” by both sides to stop the violence, the aide said.

“The president stressed his view that it’s up to the parties to make the judgments about how the effort is to proceed,” the official added. “ . . . Ultimately it is up to the parties when the level of violence is sufficient that they can move from one stage to the next.”

Under a process for restarting the peace negotiations spelled out by an international commission, a cease-fire is to be followed by a cooling-off period and a series of “confidence-building” measures before talks resume. These measures would include a halt to construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and, on the Palestinians’ part, the arrest of militants and the confiscation of illegal weapons.

The commission’s head, George J. Mitchell, a former Democratic senator from Maine, warned in a speech Monday in Washington that despite the truce, “fear, hate, anger and frustration have risen on both sides” and that “the culture of peace nurtured over the previous decade is being shattered.”

Mitchell also said Bush should at some point invite Arafat to Washington. But the senior administration official who briefed reporters said Tuesday that there are “no plans at this stage for the chairman to come here,” noting that Powell will meet with Arafat during his trip to the region.

“I think the secretary will be very clear with Chairman Arafat,” the official said.

Bush and Sharon “spent a great deal of time” discussing the Mitchell report, he added.

Speaking with journalists in the White House driveway after his meeting with Bush, Sharon refused to accept a reporter’s premise that “each side provokes the other,” asserting: “Once we accepted the Mitchell report, I declared a unilateral cease-fire, and we stopped. The reaction of the Palestinian Authority was more terror and more violence. . . . Now we hope that Arafat would understand that he cannot gain anything by terror.”