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U.S. Rebukes Sharon for "Unacceptable" Comments
WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the White House deemed his comments about appeasing Arabs at Israel's expense "unacceptable," officials said.
Powell, in a phone call to Sharon, "made clear the reaction" of U.S. President George W. Bush, who deemed the comments "unacceptable," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Late Thursday, Sharon warned Bush not to cater to Arab nations, and urged Western nations not to pursue appeasement as they did when they "sacrificed Czechoslovakia" to Hitler at the 1938 Munich conference.
"Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense," Sharon said. "This is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism."
Earlier this week, Bush sparked a wide range of responses among Arabs, Israelis and others by saying that an independent Palestinian state had always been part of the U.S. vision of the peace process.
Powell added to the President's comments Tuesday, "There has always been a vision in our thinking, as well in previous administrations' thinking, that there would be a Palestinian state that would exist at the same time that the security of the state of Israel was also recognized, guaranteed and accepted by all parties."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on the specifics of Powell's phone call to Sharon, but said the secretary would likely speak with the Israeli premier again on Friday.
In addition, Boucher said Powell had talked about the urgent need for both Israel and the Palestinians to take steps to quell the upsurge of violence that has all but shredded a fragile truce agreed to last week.
"We've been deeply troubled by the events of the past few days," he said.
Boucher said Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority had "failed" to implement measures to curtail attacks on Israelis and accused Israel of reacting provocatively to such violence by sending troops into Palestinian-controlled areas.
"The Palestinians have failed to do everything they can to prevent the violence against Israelis and we think the Israeli response, including the incursions into Palestinian territory, has been provocative," Boucher said.
"If both sides are serious, they know what they have to do," he told reporters, calling on the Palestinians to take immediate "sustained and effective" measures to end the attacks and arrest those responsible for them.
"Failure to do so makes any effort to restore calm impossible," he said.
"On the Israeli side, we think they need to refrain from provocative acts that can only escalate tensions and undermine efforts to bring about a lasting halt to violence." Boucher added.
The remarks came amid another day of bloody violence, in which five Palestinians were killed in the flashpoint city of Hebron while an Israeli was slain in a drive-by shooting.
Seventeen Palestinians were also wounded in an incursion launched at dawn by Israeli tanks backed by helicopters into Palestinian-controlled areas of Hebron, police and hospital sources said.
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