Mona Ziade
Daily Star staff

Despite upbeat statements by key players, efforts to convene a Mideast peace conference in the near future appear to have stumbled over cracks in the international coalition of mediators and in the US administration itself.
The United States and Britain are at odds over Yasser Arafat’s future role, and while US President George W. Bush views the Palestinian president as an untrustworthy interlocutor, Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, has publicly disagreed.
And with the goal of such a conference more vague than ever after US indications that the maximum the Palestinians should hope for is a “provisional” state, neither the Palestinians nor other Arabs are likely to put their credibility at stake for a US president blowing hot and cold in his approach to Palestinian statehood.
This, however, might change as early as next week if Bush unveils the promised road map to a peace settlement after rounding out consultations with regional leaders in which he made no secret of his pro-Israel sentiment and antipathy toward Arafat.
The White House’s latest guest was Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s veteran foreign minister, who rushed unexpectedly to Washington this week after alarming mixed signals from the Bush administration. Bush had a “warm visit” with the prince, the White House said, but the US president was not ready yet to make a declaration on the hoped-for Palestinian state.
The prince said only that he was “very pleased with what I heard from the president.”
Bush and Saud talked only in a “generalized fashion” about the president’s developing plan for an independent Palestine, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.
“They did not get into bullet-by-bullet, specific-by-specific plans,” he said.
“The president believes that Saudi Arabia is committed to a meaningful and lasting peace process in the Middle East and that includes providing for security for Israel as well as a hopeful and helpful future for the Palestinian people,” Fleischer said, avoiding any reference to a Palestinian state.
Saud sought to reinforce the request of several Arab leaders that Bush act quickly to create a state and to compel Israel to give up all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
“I don’t think they expect the United States to do 100 percent of everything they ask the United States to do,” Fleischer said when asked where Bush stood on that.
Last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt asked Bush to set a deadline for a state. Bush turned him down.
In recent public statements, Powell has floated the idea of a provisional Palestinian state. But White House officials said Thursday that the statements were premature.
Powell was due to meet separately Friday with the Saudi foreign minister and with Nabil Shaath, a senior Arafat adviser.
In suggesting the possibility of an interim Palestinian state, Powell left open the possibility that Arafat would head it.
“It isn’t all that new and revolutionary a suggestion,” Powell said as he flew to a foreign ministers’ meeting in Canada. “It’s been a pretty consistent element in all of the discussions.”
Bush has watered down his erstwhile enthusiasm for a summer peace conference, declaring that the time was not ripe for such a forum. But foreign ministers from the world’s leading nations, meeting in Canada, disagreed, insisting it was the only option to end the violence.
Powell, offering new evidence of disagreement with the White House, was one of those who backed the idea after intense talks at a late-night private dinner in the western Canadian resort of Whistler. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said the ministers from the Group of Eight ­ Canada, Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Russia ­  had had “a very, very frank” discussion.
“We have confirmed today the need to convoke an international conference ­ the sooner the better,” said Pique, who attended the dinner as an observer for the European Union, whose rotating presidency Spain currently holds.
The idea of a Middle East conference was raised last month by the so-called Quartet ­ the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. But Bush insisted during a meeting in Washington Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the time was not ripe for a conference because “no one has confidence” in Arafat’s leadership.
This point of view is clearly not shared by the G8 foreign ministers. Even Britain, the closest US ally, disagreed. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw rejected Bush’s reluctance to deal with Arafat.
“We have to deal with the leaders that are there for the time being,” Straw said. “We don’t choose the leaders of other countries. And that obviously includes Mr. Arafat.”
Significantly, Straw spoke a day after Sharon met in London with British Premier Tony Blair. Straw’s remarks indicated Sharon’s efforts to woo the Europeans after winning Bush’s backing had not gone too well.
Jordanian King Abdullah II  said he remained “cautiously optimistic” that the United States and the international community could reach agreement to pull off a peace conference.
“I still believe that there is an opportunity this summer to bring Israelis and Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs to a low-level conference,” he told French television.
Asked to comment on the US role in the peace process, Abdullah said a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis must be within a clearly-defined “endgame” that would ensure the creation of a “viable Palestinian state” and guarantee “security and integration” for Israel.
The Palestinians also were quick to dismiss the idea of an interim state.
“We can’t accept interim solutions anymore; we need to move to a final deal,” said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Arafat, meanwhile, was busy consolidating his grip on power, convening the first meeting of his new Cabinet hours after Israeli troops and tanks pulled away from his war-ravaged headquarters in Ramallah.
The streamlined Cabinet was appointed Sunday and had been set to meet Monday, but Israeli tanks and troops moved into Ramallah early Monday and caused a postponement.
Arafat charged that Israel’s incursion was an attempt to “sabotage” Palestinian efforts to run their affairs and work for a state “with Jerusalem as its capital.”
He told his new Cabinet that it must “guarantee the restructure of the ministries and institutions of the Palestinian Authority to be more efficient.”
Israeli troops completed their retreat from the heart of Ramallah and Arafat’s headquarters at dawn, but kept the city encircled. Shortly thereafter, troops entered the town of Toubas near Jenin. Two soldiers and two Palestinians were wounded in an exchange of fire. Troops made arrests and imposed a curfew on the town.
In the southern Gaza Strip, three Israeli soldiers and five Palestinians were wounded in exchanges of fire near the Neve Dkalim Jewish settlement.
In Rafah five Palestinians, including an official of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, were were arrested. ­ With agencies

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