Cheney Proposes to Meet With Arafat

Vice President Dick Cheney offered Tuesday to return to the Middle East as early as next week to meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, but only if the Palestinians implement a long-delayed security plan.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he will allow the Palestinian leader to travel to an Arab League summit in Beirut next week from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israeli troops have confined him for three months.

But Sharon hinted that Israel may not let Arafat come back if it doesn’t like what he says at the meeting, where Arab states will discuss a Saudi Middle East peace plan.

Cheney and Sharon made their qualified gestures to Arafat as both Israelis and Palestinians said they believe that they are close to declaring a cease-fire after 18 months of fighting.

But violence threatened to torpedo the progress made since U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni arrived here last week for intensive talks with the two sides. A suspected Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus at the start of rush hour this morning, killing at least six people, including himself, and injuring 28, Israeli television reported.

Initial reports said the bus was bound from Tel Aviv north to Afula and blew up near the Megiddo junction. Police said the bomber appeared to have been sitting in the middle of the bus when he detonated his explosives. Ambulances rushed to the scene. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Earlier, at a joint news conference with Cheney, Sharon said he will pay close attention to Arafat’s statements at the Arab summit to ensure that he doesn’t engage in what Sharon called “incitement.”

Nabil abu Rudaineh, a senior aide to Arafat, dismissed Sharon’s comments themselves as “incitement,” saying they “do not help further American peace efforts.”

But he welcomed Cheney’s offer to meet soon with Arafat. Palestinian officials had described the vice president’s earlier refusal to meet Arafat as a slap in the face.

“We consider Cheney’s comments a positive step ahead and a move in the right direction. Such a meeting would put the U.S.-Palestinian relations on the right track,” Abu Rudaineh said in Ramallah after Zinni delivered a letter from Cheney to Arafat.

Late Tuesday, the Palestinian Cabinet issued a statement saying it is ready to implement a cease-fire “according to a timetable agreed on by both sides, without any delay,” but complained that Israeli troops were still encircling Palestinian towns and villages.

The vice president would be the most senior member of the Bush administration to meet with Arafat, who became an almost routine visitor to the White House during the Clinton administration.

In contrast with the Bush administration’s earlier hands-off approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Cheney said in Jerusalem on Tuesday, “We will remain very actively engaged in this extremely important effort.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer noted Cheney’s offer to return to the Middle East, saying: “The ingredients are there, and it’s very important now to see what the events are on the ground. As you know, the president measures these matters in results. The president is very realistic. He’s less interested in talk and more interested in results.”

After three meetings in fewer than 18 hours, Cheney and Sharon presented a nearly unified front at a joint appearance Tuesday, laying down markers for Arafat.

The first step would be the simultaneous declaration of a cease-fire by Sharon and Arafat, followed by rapid implementation of the security plan proposed by CIA Director George J. Tenet. Political negotiations would follow under a process conceived by an international committee headed by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine). The plans are meant to lead the parties back to negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement.

Palestinians said a cease-fire announcement could come today, after Zinni chairs a meeting of senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials. It will be the second round of U.S.-sponsored high-level security talks in 48 hours. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he thought a cease-fire would be declared by Thursday.

Cheney said implementation of the Tenet security plan “requires 100% effort by Chairman Arafat to stop the violence and the terror, and I would expect a 100% effort to begin immediately.”

“I cannot emphasize enough how important it will be this week for Chairman Arafat to take the steps to get the cease-fire started and to start implementation of the Tenet work plan.”

Specifically, he said, Arafat must convey to the Palestinians the importance of “ending violence and terrorism” and instruct “his security services to enforce the cease-fire.”

At a news conference in a crowded meeting room near Sharon’s office, Cheney warned that failure to move ahead with Tenet’s security plan “will torpedo this process.”

The plan would require Israel to pull back to positions it held before violence erupted in September 2000, to stop assassinating Palestinian militants and stop destroying Palestinian Authority security buildings.

But Israeli adherence to a cease-fire also depends on the Palestinians’ acceptance of the Tenet plan’s demand that they arrest militants and disarm militias. Arafat and his security forces have been loath to take those steps without an Israeli commitment to further territorial withdrawals and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel has agreed to withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza that it began occupying two weeks ago during a large-scale military operation. The Palestinians had insisted that they would not discuss a cease-fire until that pullout was complete.

In the West Bank town of Beit Sahur on Tuesday, gunmen aligned with Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement said they are willing to give the cease-fire a chance but were skeptical that Sharon intends to build on quiet by starting political negotiations with the Palestinians.

“Will the cease-fire last? This is very much depending on what is going to follow the cease-fire declaration,” said Ayman abu Aita, an activist with the Tanzim militia. “If it is not followed with a political scheme that will bring justice to us, then one bullet will be enough to bring an end to the cease-fire.”

Outside the office where he spoke, life began to return to what passes for normality in Palestinian-controlled areas these days. Israeli troops pulled out of Beit Sahur, Bethlehem and neighboring villages before dawn Tuesday, paving the way for a cease-fire declaration. Residents ventured out of their homes for the first time in days, as businesspeople reopened shops and municipalities cleared streets of debris and barricades.

But in Bethlehem’s Dahaisha refugee camp, where soldiers rounded up hundreds of men and boys for questioning last week, Ahmad Mugrabe surveyed the wreckage of his home, blown up by Israeli troops during an incursion into the camp March 11. It will take a long time, he said, for Palestinians to ease their hatred for Israel after the months of fighting.

“They only increased the hatred and deepened the sorrow during their invasion here,” he said. “But still, we hope for some tangible results on the ground as a result of this weak U.S. intervention.”

Palestinian officials, however, viewed Cheney’s declaration of a willingness to meet Arafat as an important shift in the Bush administration’s policy.

Cheney avoided Arafat during his current trip, an 11-day journey that began in London and ends today in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

By not setting up a meeting with Arafat, Cheney risked undercutting the central mission of his journey: to win support among leaders of Islamic nations for further U.S. action in the war on terrorism and, in particular, a campaign to restrict Iraq’s access to weapons of mass destruction.

Several of the countries that the vice president visited would be called upon to provide logistical support for military action against Iraq.

Despite his efforts, the roiling issues of the Middle East overtook Cheney’s agenda, much as they are intruding on the administration’s overall conduct of foreign policy. Leaders in Washington have been forced to pay heed after President Bush had tried to sidestep the region and its turmoil during his first year in office.

Cheney sought to dispel the notion that he was ignoring the plight of the Palestinians while focusing on Iraq.

“In fact, we are working very hard,” he said.

As he traveled from Jordan to Egypt and then to the Persian Gulf nations, it became increasingly clear that Cheney would be unable to move the administration’s anti-terrorism campaign forward in the region if the United States didn’t try to calm the violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

At virtually every stop, leaders he met hammered that message home either in public statements before he arrived or in joint news conferences after they had conferred with him.

Gerstenzang reported from Jerusalem and Curtius from Beit Sahur. Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.