Powell wades into murky Mideast waters

By Howard Goller

JERUSALEM (Reuters): New U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tiptoes into the minefield of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy for 21 hours this weekend during a lightning Middle East get- acquainted tour.

Making his first solo trip abroad in the month since he took office with President George W. Bush, the former top general of the United States will visit six Middle East countries and the Palestinian Authority.

"I imagine he is coming to hear what the major players have to say," an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said. "He is coming more to listen than to speak."

However little they may expect, Israeli and Palestinian officials and analysts will pay close attention to any changes to the hands-on approach of the previous, eight-year administration of President Bill Clinton.

Powell will be in Israel and Palestinian-ruled Gaza only on Saturday night and Sunday.

Powell himself has said he plans only to "share views" and "make an assessment of the situation". The trip is timed mainly to coincide with Kuwaiti celebrations on Monday of 10 years to the end of the Gulf War.

But each side will search for clues as to how the longtime main Middle East mediator will act under new management.

It remains to be seen whether George W. Bush takes the same tough stance against Jewish settlement expansion as did his father George Bush, the U.S. president from 1989-1993, or insists on full implementation of existing peace deals.

Powell arrives in the thick of the bloodiest clashes to rack the West Bank and Gaza Strip in decades. The violence erupted in September following the breakdown of a Clinton-brokered Middle East peace bid.

More than 400 people have been killed, 330 of them Palestinians.

An adviser to right-wing Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon, Dore Gold, welcomed on Wednesday what he said were U.S. statements that proposals for ending the conflict raised by Clinton were not binding under Bush.

The proposals, for giving Palestinians more than 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza and sharing sovereignty in Jerusalem, were backed by Prime Minister Ehud Barak but opposed by Sharon, who crushed the Labour Party chief at the polls two weeks ago.

At the same time, however, an apparent desire by the U.S. administration to be relatively even-handed has raised eyebrows among some in Israel, Washington's closest Middle East ally and the recipient of about $3 billion a year in U.S. aid.

After a Bush State Department spokesman appealed to both sides to take steps to curb the violence, Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper lashed out at "the American refusal to distinguish between victim and aggressor".

Powell can be expected to push Sharon, also a former general, to outline his ideas for peacemaking. Israeli analysts believe that together, they will gladly abandon the go-for-broke approach of their U.S. and Israeli predecessors.

"The new administration would prefer to adopt a stage-by-stage approach rather than pursue a permanent solution. This will fit Sharon's policy. Sharon prefers it too," Prof. Gabi Sheffer of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told Reuters.

He also predicted a change in tactics and perhaps rhetoric -- Sharon has demanded an end to violence before peace negotiations can resume -- but much may depend on the sort of coalition the rightist Likud party leader can assemble.

Sharon hopes to forge a left-to-right unity government that would help him meet a campaign pledge to pursue peace, but opposition in the left-leaning Labor Party to joining forces may leave him at the top of a narrow, right-wing coalition.

Palestinians are hoping to discover in their talks with Powell what they view as a more just approach to peacemaking.

They expect Powell to raise objections to Israel's policy of killing Palestinian leaders it suspects of attacks on Israelis.

"We are willing to see a decisive American role in the peace process and we are willing to cooperate to make these efforts successful," Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, told Reuters.

But he added: "Until the Palestinian people feel a strong American stand regarding ending the Israeli occupation for Palestinian lands, the region will suffer instability and insecurity."

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian planning minister who met Powell in Washington this week, welcomed his commitment to improving economic conditions for the Palestinian people.

Asked what he would expect Palestinians to tell Powell, Khalil Shikaki, professor of political science at al-Najah University in the West Bank, said:

"I would indeed tell the secretary of state that the U.S. must learn from ... (its) mistakes and must now fully insist on cessation of settlement activities, implementation of interim agreements by the two sides and making sure there is always progress in the peace process and that it does not only hinge on a final settlement that ends the conflict."