Powell: 'Give peace the opportunity to flourish'

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell

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(CNN) -- With Israeli forces pulling back Sunday from the West Bank cities of Nablus and Ramallah, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said talks on security cooperation should be the next step toward peace in the Middle East.

Powell talked Sunday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer about his recent 10-day mission to the troubled region and what both sides must do to achieve a lasting peace.

BLITZER: Where do you go from here? Are you sending the CIA director, George Tenet, to pick up where you left off?

POWELL: Well, not yet. The first thing we had to see was the Israeli withdrawal. And now, we see that that is in full swing. It doesn't mean the crisis is over. Many of the Israeli units will still be on the outskirts of some of these towns and just on the other side in Zone B. And we want to see access now. We want to see life start to return to normal in these towns and cities.

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But the withdrawal that [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon and I spoke about last week, and the schedule for the withdrawal -- he has met the timelines that he gave me last week, and I'm pleased about that. And it's two weeks and days from [President Bush's] speech of April 4.

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Now that that is under way, I think opportunities present themselves to begin security coordination again. We still have two difficult issues: in Ramallah, where Chairman [Yasser] Arafat is located, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We're working both of those problems, trying to find a solution.

They're really not so much directly related to the withdrawal as they are to the peculiar circumstances of these two situations: the [Israeli Tourism Minister Rachavam] Ze'evi murderers in Ramallah, and the people who are detained inside the Church of the Nativity. And we've got to solve both of them.

BLITZER: Let's talk about both of those issues very briefly -- the five suspected killers of Israeli Tourism Minister Rachavam Ze'evi. Do you believe that they should be handed over to the Israelis as the Israelis demand? Or the Palestinians have proposed that they put them on trial -- do you have confidence in a Palestinian trial?

POWELL: I'm trying to broker a solution. On the one hand, the Israelis feel very, very strongly that they committed a crime against Israeli citizens, they should be under Israeli jurisdiction and go before an Israeli tribunal. The Palestinians are of the view that they have them in detention now, and under the provisions of the bilateral agreement that they have with the Israelis, that's where they belong and they should be tried by Palestinian authorities.

I think what we should be doing right now -- what we are doing right now -- [is] looking for ways to bridge these two positions and see if we can't find a solution. We have faced difficult jurisdictional problems like this in the past and found solutions, and we're looking for a solution now. We do not want to see this situation resolved in a violent way, and that's our message right now: Give us time to find a way out of this and let's not try to solve it through the use of any violence.

BLITZER: The Israelis also say they want another individual, a man by the name of Fuad Shobaki, who they say was responsible for the Karin-A shipment, the shipment of arms from Iran to the Palestinian Authority. First of all, do you believe that he was acting on his own, that Yasser Arafat knew nothing about that shipment?

POWELL: What we have said is that we believe that knowledge of that shipment extended rather high into the Palestinian Authority. And, as you know, Chairman Arafat gave us a letter some time ago accepting responsibility on behalf of the Palestinian Authority for that shipment.

BLITZER: So that ends the issue right there? Should Mr. Shobaki be allowed to go free?

POWELL: I think this falls into the same category as the Ze'evi killers, and we have to resolve this as a package.

BLITZER: What about Bethlehem? How do you resolve that standoff where some 200 people remain holed up in the church near Manger Square?

POWELL: We have a number of interesting ideas that we're looking at, not only U.S. ideas but ideas that have been put forward by other nations and some church officials. And we hope that the two sides will begin talking to one another in a more focused way to find a solution. And so it's a little bit like the situation in Ramallah. But I'm hopeful that with goodwill on both sides in an effort to resolve it in a nonviolent way, we will find a solution.

BLITZER: [There are] lots of media reports that the CIA is directly involved in trying to find a solution to the Church of the Nativity standoff. Is that true?

POWELL: There are a number of people who are working on solutions with respect to that standoff. I would not say that the CIA is in the lead role at the moment.

BLITZER: What do you see as far as the accusation that the prime minister of Israel defied the president of the United States in delaying the withdrawal from those areas that Israel recently reoccupied?

POWELL: The president wanted to see the withdrawal take place as quickly as possible. And he said that in a speech on the 4th of April, and he reinforced that the following Saturday, on the 6th of April, when he spoke in Crawford, Texas, with [British] Prime Minister [Tony] Blair and when he spoke to Prime Minister Sharon that afternoon.

We always recognized that you can't stop an operation like that immediately, that there would be some time lag. We would have preferred a much shorter time lag. But when I visited with Prime Minister Sharon on three occasions in the course of my trip -- it was last weekend that he gave me the specific timeline for the withdrawal and shared it with the president. So we had been clocking that in the course of the week. And the withdrawal is taking place in accordance with the timeline that Prime Minister Sharon and I discussed last weekend.

BLITZER: The Arabs and Palestinians, in particular, are outraged by the statement President Bush made that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace. You've seen the reaction. Do you believe that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace?

POWELL: You know, in every conversation I've had with Prime Minister Sharon, he has concentrated on security. He was elected to office because Israel was not secure. The Intifada was killing, on a daily basis, innocent civilians. And so, he was elected on a platform of security. And we've talked about security repeatedly.

But in every conversation I've ever had with Prime Minister Sharon, when we've talked about security, we've also talked about the peace process. He has recommitted himself over and over to the Tenet work plan, to the Mitchell peace plan. He acknowledges that there is a need for a Palestinian state.

Even just a few weeks ago, before the incursion began, the night before the Passover massacre, he once again said that he was committed to this. And he accepted the Tenet work plan and told [U.S. Middle East envoy] Gen. [Anthony] Zinni that at the time -- the bridging proposal that Gen. Zinni had put forward. So he has shown, even while he is concentrating on security, that he is interested in moving forward to negotiations and peace.

In my conversations with Chairman Arafat and with Arab leaders, I've noted that same desire. It is [Saudi] Crown Prince Abdullah who went to the Arab League summit in Beirut and put forward a powerful message of how 22 Arab states are now prepared to live in peace with Israel, if issues of boundaries, if issues of refugees, if those other difficult issues can be resolved. And this is a powerful statement coming from the Arab side.

It's a powerful statement not just because it comes from the Arab side, but because it's a message to Chairman Arafat as well, that we all now have to join in moving forward toward peace and toward negotiations. And it's why, in my press conference in Jerusalem before I left, and in all the statements I've made, I have been focusing on security, on more rapid movement to negotiations -- a political process -- and humanitarian efforts, and reconstruction and economic rebuilding.

All of these have now come together in a more accelerated way. And we have to get going. There is a way to get going, and that's through Tenet and Mitchell. But we have to accelerate our efforts.

The Palestinian people are looking for security in their own homes as they see it. Security from harassment, security from humiliation, security from Israeli responses. The Israelis want to live in peace and security in their own homes and in their communities, but they know that the way to get there is through discussions that will lead to a political settlement.

BLITZER: Is Yasser Arafat a man of peace?

POWELL: Yasser Arafat, I have talked to in considerable detail in the two visits I had with him in Ramallah. And what I said to him is that you have used terror and you have used violence to try to achieve your goals. This is the time to stop moving in that direction; that will not lead you to your goals. This is the time to make a strategic decision and to use your position as leader of the Palestinian people, which Palestinian people say you are, and which I understand you are.

Now, use that position to speak out against incitement, to speak out against violence, to speak out against terror, to tell your people that this is the time to use the good offices of the United States and the international community, the Madrid statement we put out, the U.N. resolutions that have become so powerful in recent weeks, to move toward a peaceful solution.

It's the same message that I gave to all of our Arab friends as I visited the region. Use your good offices, use your influence with the Palestinian people, with the Palestinian leaders, to move us away from incitement. Use your leadership position with your own people to talk against violence, to talk against suicide bombings and to talk peace. And let's give peace the opportunity to flourish. Because it is only through negotiations that get us to peace that we find a solution that will create another state -- Palestine -- living in peace, side by side, with the state of Israel.

BLITZER: So are you prepared, when all is said and done, to say today that Yasser Arafat is a man of peace?

POWELL: I think that we have to give him the chance to demonstrate that he is a man of peace. It is not for me to designate him or not designate him. The burden is on Chairman Arafat to match deeds with words.

He has said the right thing recently. Now we have to have to look for him to do the right thing by speaking out as the leader and by taking action within whatever capacity he has, however limited that capacity might be, to take action to demonstrate to all of us that that is what he wants -- peace and a Palestinian state.

BLITZER: Former President Jimmy Carter, writing in The New York Times [on Sunday], had some recommendations for your administration. Among other things, he said this: "It is time for the United States, as the sole recognized intermediary, to consider more forceful action for peace. The rest of the world will welcome this leadership."

Among other things, he said maybe it's time to reconsider all that U.S. military assistance to the Israelis if they're not using it legally, according to the stipulations provided under the existing legislation.

POWELL: We have no plans at the moment to restrict any of the support that we provide to our friends and have provided for many years, in fact since President Carter was in office.

And as [Carter] noted, we are being much more active. It is this president, President George W. Bush, who went to the United Nations last fall and called for the creation of a Palestinian state by the name of Palestine, saying it for the first time in an international forum such as that.

In my Louisville speech last November, I laid out a comprehensive framework as to how we could move forward. We have supported U.N. Resolutions 1397, 1402, 1403, all of which move us in the right direction. We have embraced and welcomed Crown Prince Abdullah's plan, his vision for a way forward as captured now by the Arab League. And President Bush looks forward to seeing Crown Prince Abdullah later this week.

So we are engaged. The president sent me to the region. The president has given me clear instructions as to what we want to do: security, negotiations to get a political solution and a humanitarian reconstruction, economic leg to our strategy.

BLITZER: A lot of people have gone now into the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank, and have expressed horror at the sights that they've seen. I know that your assistant secretary, William Burns, was just there. What did he tell you about these allegations that the Israeli military may have been involved in what the Palestinians say was a massacre?

POWELL: I sent Bill Burns in on Friday. He spent over three hours in the camp and the reports were very troubling -- the suffering that has occurred and the humanitarian need that exists.

But in three hours, he couldn't come to any conclusions as to whether there was unwise use of force. That's why it was important for us to have a U.N. team go in. And I'm pleased that the United States played the leadership role on Friday in developing a resolution that will be sending in a U.N. team. And I'm pleased that the Israeli government is accepting a team to come in and find out the facts. And we will support that team in every way possible.

We're also doing whatever we can to help in this humanitarian effort. We are sending in 800 tents, family-size tents, to be provided to people who've lost their homes. We're sending in enough water purification equipment to take care of 10,000 people a day and over 1,000 disease reduction kits, they're called, to try to keep communicable diseases from spreading in this current situation -- lack of sanitation, lack of running water. We're also encouraging the Israelis to open Jenin up as much as possible to humanitarian relief.

And finally, we're working with friends and colleagues around the world to get more explosive ordnance demolition teams in, so that we can get rid of the booby traps and unexploded ordnance, which is getting in the way of the relief effort.