Powell Wins Accord for 7-Day ‘Calm’

Flying to the Middle East earlier this week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said progress in the volatile region must be measured by inches. On Thursday, after meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, he found out just how difficult those inches can be.

Powell told a late-night news conference here that he had worked out with Sharon and Arafat a time schedule for peace efforts that will begin if there are no deadly incidents between Israelis and Palestinians for seven consecutive days.

That seven-day period clips three days off the “time of calm” that Sharon, in a meeting Tuesday with President Bush at the White House, said he would insist on. Sharon’s plan surprised U.S. officials at the time, but two days later Powell endorsed the concept.

Earlier on Thursday, Powell asserted that observers will be needed to monitor Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the cease-fire and other agreements. Arafat has been seeking an outside observer force for months.

But Sharon told the joint news conference with Powell that he saw no need for monitors. And Powell said observers can be deployed only with the approval of both sides.

A few hours before Powell and Sharon met over dinner at the prime minister’s residence, an Israeli woman was killed in a West Bank shooting that Sharon blamed on elements of Arafat’s Fatah organization. Another woman was wounded.

After the slaying, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said: “If they continue terror activities and there is no quiet, the pin will be pulled and the hard lives of the Palestinians will be even more intolerable. Hell will arrive at their doors.”

Sharon and Powell did not go that far, although the secretary of State deplored “the assassination, the killing this afternoon, this horrible tragedy of a young mother.”

The shooting postponed the start of the seven-day period, which Sharon called a “test” of Palestinian intentions. Israeli officials said that seven consecutive days without such violence will be necessary to move the process to the second phase, a six-week “cooling-off period,” which Powell said is intended to restore the “confidence and trust” between Israelis and Palestinians that have been shattered by nine months of fighting.

The Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said Arafat ordered his security forces to track down and arrest the killers in the West Bank shooting. Late Thursday, Arafat told reporters that he instructed his West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub, to “give instructions to his security forces about this matter.” He declined to elaborate.

Arafat also repeated his assertion that he will not arrest militants of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, as Israel has demanded, “because we respect all those parties and there is a union between all of us, among our masses.” The Palestinian leader said he will arrest anyone who violates the cease-fire now, not those who have attacked Israelis before it took effect.

The woman slain Thursday was the seventh Israeli and the fifth settler killed since the U.S.-brokered cease-fire took effect June 13.

A senior State Department official said there was no agreement yet on whether the cooling-off period would have to be restarted each time there was bloodshed. But Sharon implied that it would.

“After seven trial days, the cooling-off period will begin,” Sharon said. “During this entire period there must be complete quiet. If complete quiet is maintained, we will proceed to the next stage.”

Powell said he cleared that plan with Arafat during a meeting at the Palestinian Authority’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In a joint news conference with Powell there, Arafat renewed his pledge to end the violence.

Addressing Powell, Arafat said: “Your excellency, we are completely committed to the peace process . . . and we will do all our best in the future, and from now, not in the future, from now. . . . I am sure that our people will follow up what I am promising your excellency--no doubt.”

But late Thursday, meeting with reporters in his office while Powell was conferring with Sharon, Arafat struck a less conciliatory note.

Asked whether he agrees with Palestinian militants that Jewish settlers are legitimate targets, Arafat responded: “It is your idea, but not our idea. For us, they are Israelis.” But he added that settlers commit violence “against our people, against our cities, towns, roads, fields.”

In his appearance with Powell, Arafat appealed for “an international observer committee . . . headed by the United States, Europe and the United Nations.” He said 10 European Union observers deployed in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahur have discouraged both sides from breaking the cease-fire, which has been extremely shaky elsewhere. He said there has been very little gunfire in the three towns since the unarmed EU monitors were deployed.

Powell responded: “There will be a need for monitors and observers to see what’s happening on the ground . . . to go to points of friction and make an independent observation of what has happened.”

The United States twice vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions to establish a U.N. observer force to protect Palestinian civilians from Israeli soldiers. At the time, U.S. officials said the resolutions were one-sided. But Powell said Thursday that a plan acceptable to both sides can be worked out.