Press Availability by Richard Boucher

MR. BOUCHER:  Secretary Powell will meet with Chairman Arafat tomorrow, Sunday, April 14, in Ramallah.  The statement issued earlier today by Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian leadership contains a number of interesting and positive elements:

n      Condemnation of all terrorist acts against Israeli and Palestinian civilians,

n      A strong condemnation of yesterday’s bombing in Jerusalem,

n      A call to start immediate implementation of the Tenet understandings and the Mitchell Report,

n      A reaffirmation of the Palestinian commitment to a negotiated peace, and

n      Support for Secretary Powell and his mission.

In his meeting tomorrow, the Secretary will work with Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian leadership to show leadership and to help make these statements a reality with effective action to bring an end to terror and violence and an early resumption of a political process.

I think I was asked last night about contacts and phone calls.  I was asked during the day about what we have been doing, what the Secretary has been doing today.  So, I can answer those on the record.  Yesterday evening the Secretary talked to a number of people.  He talked to King Abdullah of Jordan twice -- yesterday, Friday evening.  He talked to Foreign Minister Maher of Egypt, he talked to the European High Representative Solana, he talked to Foreign Minister Pique of Spain.  Today, he’s talked to Foreign Minister Ivanov of Russia.  He has been meeting with his team, General Zinni, Assistant Secretary Burns and others.  We have been staying in touch by telephone with the Palestinians.  We haven’t had any meetings today with Palestinians, haven’t had any meetings with the Israelis because it is Sabbath, but we have been staying in touch with them as well, as well as Saudis, Jordanians, and others.  So, that’s the answer to those questions.

QUESTION: Who did he talk to on the Saudi side?.

MR. BOUCHER:  I think various people on our delegation have talked to various of them.

QUESTION: Could you repeat what you said about the Saudis?

MR. BOUCHER:  Today, during the course of the day we have been in touch --  delegation  members have been in touch -- our people have been in touch with various Saudis, Jordanians and others by phone.

QUESTION: What about the President or Condi (Rice)?

MR. BOUCHER:  The Secretary has been talking to Washington.  He has talked to Armitage, he has talked to Condi, I don’t think  he has talked to the President.

QUESTION: That was today?

MR. BOUCHER:  That was today.   That is today, yesterday, the day before, it’s probably tomorrow too.

QUESTION: Not the President.

MR. BOUCHER:  I said he has been keeping in touch with Deputy Secretary Armitage.  He has talked to Dr. Rice once or twice, maybe more. 

QUESTION: Dr. Rice once or twice.

MR. BOUCHER:  Dr. Rice more than twice -- or at least twice.  I don’t think he has talked to the President, but actually I haven’t asked him directly.

QUESTION: What are your expectations for tomorrow in terms of substance?

MR. BOUCHER:  I think this is not the point to start predicting the substance or outcome of the meetings.  We have, I think, made clear to the General the expectations that we have with Chairman Arafat.  The President made that very clear in his speech.  The Secretary has made that clear in his various remarks and the statements that we have issued and so that’s what we will be talking to him about, as we said, bringing an end to terror and violence and an early resumption of the political process.

QUESTION: Does the Secretary feel that this statement by Chairman Arafat is substantively different from the many, many statements he has made in the past renouncing terrorism?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t think I would characterize it one way or the other.  There have been other statements by Chairman Arafat.  What we have always said is that these need to be followed by effective action.  That’s what we are saying in the statement today.  We look forward to going down there, to working with him and the other Palestinian leaders to develop effective action to implement these steps.

QUESTION: Any other Palestinian leaders will be in the meetings, you expect?

MR. BOUCHER:  I expect so.

QUESTION: To what extent was there discussions with the Palestinians about what the statement would say?

MR. BOUCHER:  To the extent that the President made clear in his speech what we wanted to hear from the Palestinians.  The Secretary has made it clear in his statements as well.  But it was their statement --  they did it.

QUESTION: Were the discussions saying look closely at what the President has said, look closely at what the Secretary has said….

MR. BOUCHER:  I’d say, we just kept talking to them, we reiterated what we’d said, what the President said.  We reiterated what the Secretary said.  We reiterated what we’d said in our statement.

QUESTION: This was yesterday in Jericho with General Zinni and other contacts?

MR. BOUCHER:  Well, yes. The other contacts.  Along the lines of the statement last night that started out by saying, Secretary Powell said he condemned the bombing.  We started out the statement  last night by saying Secretary Powell condemned the bombing in the strongest terms, and we expected the Palestinians to do so as well.

QUESTION: Richard, we asked for Arafat to condemn violence before the bombing yesterday.  Did his statement today go far enough in what w have been asking for him to do for more than two weeks?

MR. BOUCHER:  I’m not prepared with that kind of analysis at this point, because I think in the final analysis, the bottom line for us has always been seeing the statements, but then translating them into action , and that’s our focus right now.

QUESTION: What did the day’s delay accomplish for Arafat?

QUESTION: Can you tell us the meetings that General Zinni and Aaron have had between the time that Secretary Powell has arrived here and now.  And what kind of contacts did we keep up during this time as probably the main conduit for what we wanted to hear?  And also was it a problem that this wasn’t announced and that it wasn’t Chairman Arafat saying this.  You’ve often made very specific calls he needs to go on Arab media in Arabic and (inaudible).

MR. BOUCHER:  I’m sure as we go along, we’ll look for both sides to keep fulfilling the pledges that they’ve made, and to keep doing the kind of things that the President laid out in his speech.  So, I don’t know that one particular statement is the end of that process.  Chairman Arafat has made statements before directly.  This was a statement by Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian leadership.  I think it was labeled as such.  It goes out to the world as such.

QUESTION: Zinni?

MR. BOUCHER:  The principle meeting I would point to, is the one I’ve already talked about which is the meeting yesterday afternoon in Jericho with the Palestinian…(cross-talk).  General Zinni and some members of his team had a meeting yesterday afternoon in Jericho with some of the Palestinian leaders, some of Chairman Arafat’s advisors.  As I said, today there haven’t been any meetings, but various members have been in touch with the Palestinians.

QUESTION: Was that before the bombing?

MR. BOUCHER:  No, it was after.

QUESTION: The Palestinians are saying that you had told them yesterday that in fact the meeting would be held on Sunday, as long as this kind of a declaration was made.  And that they had said, well, we are not going to make this kind of a declaration unless you guys come out and say what’s happening in the West Bank now, especially in Jenin -- specific reference to Jenin -- was addressed by the Secretary. We’re getting the impression if this is correct, that this was a kind of a done deal, you knew it was a done deal, as long as you guys, the Secretary put out a statement this morning during the meeting with (inaudible).  Is that …

MR. BOUCHER:  It’s an interesting interpretation, but it’s not the way it happened.

QUESTION: Did the Palestinians tell you that they wanted to see a statement -- a strong statement from the Secretary about the humanitarian situation?

MR. BOUCHER:  The Secretary had already made strong statements about the humanitarian situation. (Cross-talk).  We mentioned the situation in Jenin last night in our statement, we were concerned about it.  We mentioned it again this morning in the statement after the UN meeting, we met with the UN representatives because we are concerned about it, and in fact they are as well, that’s one of their responsibilities to take care of people in that camp.  And that was one of the things that they talked about quite a bit.

QUESTION: They did not ask you for strong condemnation?

MR. BOUCHER:  I can’t tell you everything the Palestinians may have asked or not asked for, but the scenario, the deal that you described was not the way it happened.

QUESTION: You’ve got a pretty sobering, it sounds like, account of what’s going on both from the ICRC and UNRWA, and for your own USAID workers.  How does he see this right now and how hard is he pushing the Israelis on some accountability, especially about Jenin?

MR. BOUCHER:  As you know, we have been pressing the Israelis for the urgent completion of the withdrawals, that would include Jenin.  That would allow humanitarian workers to go back.  That would allow people whose needs need to be cared for to be cared for, so that’s part of pushing for an urgent completion. 

QUESTION: Does the Secretary have any plans, since he’s going to the West Bank, to try and see with his own eyes the humanitarian crisis that he heard about this morning?

MR. BOUCHER:  I’m sure you’ll hear a lot about it from others, but I think for any number of reasons it’s not possible for him to try to go to one of those places.

QUESTION: Did you get any indication that the delay in Chairman Arafat’s statement from last night to today -- in other words that he didn’t do it last night -- have anything to do with logistical difficulties of his getting aides near him that he felt he needed to consult with before he made a statement? 

MR. BOUCHER:  The Palestinians will have to explain that -- how they went about the process.  I think he did meet with some of his aides again today.

QUESTION: What would you say that the Secretary accomplished by delaying seeing Arafat for a day so far as the process is concerned?

MR. BOUCHER:  We said that last night that the fact there wasn’t a meeting today was because we wanted to assess the situation.  He’s assessed the situation.  We’ve seen the statement that we  wanted to see, also.  But we assessed the situation again today and said, okay, let’s go for a meeting tomorrow.

QUESTION: So then you feel the situation has changed?

MR. BOUCHER:  It almost sounds like we put up something as a condition for having this meeting.  We just said that we didn’t want to have a meeting today, and today we looked at it and decided we wanted to have a meeting tomorrow.

QUESTION: Well you know there’s another construction.  It’s possible that it would have seemed unseemly to race over to see him right after the bombing, and that if you wait day, then you can go.  So I’m trying…?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t want to put any one single factor into it.  Clearly, seeing the statement, seeing the Palestinians issues the statement -- being that that was something we were looking for since the President’s speech -- something we’ve been looking for specifically about the bombing.  As I said, that’s a positive development.  But I don’t think given the attitude we have had about this, the attitude we took last night and that I am taking today, I don’t think I want to describe this as something due to one particular effort.  We looked at the situation; we assessed it.  We said it would be as circumstances permitted and we decided that this was the right thing to do tomorrow. 

QUESTION: Can you address Israel skepticism about any statement that comes from Yasser Arafat having credibility or having any weight in light of the suicide bombers?

MR. BOUCHER:  Can I address… no.

QUESTION: The comments are very critical.

MR. BOUCHER:  You have heard critical comments from us, from the President, the Secretary and others about statements not being fulfilled. 

QUESTION: But not the kind the Israelis….

MR. BOUCHER:  I leave the Israelis to talk about their own attitude. 

QUESTION: What is your attitude?

MR. BOUCHER:  I was just about the tell you.  I’m not taking an attitude toward the Israeli statements.  I am going to say that you have heard statements from us -- from the Secretary and from the President -- you’ve heard us express our disappointment with statements that were made that were not fulfilled, and that’s why it is important to us that with this as a start you might say, we can go down and work with Chairman Arafat to try to build on this, to try to accomplish what we want to accomplish, which is to get an effective action to bring terror and violence to an end.

QUESTION: Has the Secretary been told, or his advisors have been told by the Israeli …said about this, they don’t think this is adequate, you’ve had reaction from them?

MR. BOUCHER:  We’ve been in touch with the Israelis, I frankly don’t know if we discussed this in that detail.

QUESTION:  Since you’ve added a day to the schedule, if you like, by holding off on seeing Chairman Arafat, is there an expectation that the trip will go longer than you had previously expected?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t have any predictions on the trip at this point.  The Secretary said that he was prepared to stay here for some time, and we’ll be here.

QUESTION: He said he was prepared to stay until progress was made, what did he mean by that?

MR. BOUCHER:  I think he meant what he said.  We’ll leave it for what he said, for the moment?

QUESTION: Does the U.S. government believe that yesterday’s bomb was connected to Yasser Arafat?

MR. BOUCHER:  I think that’s a question from evidence and of evidence and I will let the Israelis speak to the evidence and the information.

QUESTION: I’m asking if the U.S. government…

MR. BOUCHER:  I know you are, but it has to be based on the facts, and at this point I don’t think I’m at liberty to talk about the facts that we may or may not know.

QUESTION: When you tell the Israelis that you wanted to see Arafat, was it ever a question whether they are going to let you go see him, they denied General Zinni in the past, saying whether the security situation was bad, they would say we are not sure to…

MR. BOUCHER:  No. No.  We worked with them on these arrangements.

QUESTION: When did you all first see the statement from Chairman Arafat and how much time did you spend reviewing it before you decided it was sufficient?  Secondly, can you tell us a little bit more about the conversations with some of the world leaders that the Secretary has had last night?

MR. BOUCHER:  We saw the statement after it was issued.

QUESTION: About four o’clock?

MR. BOUCHER:  Maybe a little bit earlier.

QUESTION: Three o’clock according to the translation.

MR. BOUCHER:  About three o’clock maybe.

QUESTION: What happened in those five hours, between then and when you came to tell us this?

MR. BOUCHER:  We assessed the situation, we made a decision, we prepared a statement, and we rushed right down here to tell you. 

QUESTION: I didn’t mean to suggest you hesitated or anything.

MR. BOUCHER:  No,that’s honestly what we did.

QUESTION: I’m seconding Mr. Sipress;s request for more detail about….

MR. BOUCHER:  We got the statement in Arabic.

QUESTION: Secretary Powell was here in the hotel?

MR. BOUCHER:  Yes.  So, we were able to give him initial reports.  The Palestinians passed it to us, I think.  We translated it, we looked over it.  We met, discussed it, and started writing.  We discussed it more, we coordinated with our brethren.  And then we said we were ready to come down and put it out.

QUESTION: Which brethren are you coordinating with?

MR. BOUCHER:  Our brethren in Washington.

QUESTION:  Did the Secretary have a large meeting, small meeting, a serious of small meetings?

MR. BOUCHER:  We don’t go through every meeting the Secretary had with his advisors.  We had a number of large and small meetings with the Secretary during the course of the afternoon.

QUESTION: How long did it take for you guys once you got it to realize that it was enough?

MR. BOUCHER:  You keep asking “enough” and ‘sufficient” and I never said that something was required to be “enough” or “sufficient.”

QUESTION: (Cross-talk).

MR. BOUCHER:  The initial reports that we got and the Arabic version that we got indicated that it was a statement along the lines of the strong condemnation that the Secretary said yesterday he expected to see.

QUESTION:  Did the President make the ultimate decision or did the Secretary?  Did the President review it with Condi?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t know what went on with Washington.

QUESTION: Whether there was any Presidential involvement?

MR. BOUCHER:  I wouldn’t know.  I’m in Jerusalem; he’s in Washington. 

QUESTION:  Second part to my question, about the conversations with the world leaders?

MR. BOUCHER:  These I would describe as keeping in touch, trying to work together.  As you know, as we saw in Madrid when we met with the Madrid quartet, as we saw in our meetings with Arab leaders in Arab capitals, with a number of people, any number of people told us that they wanted to be helpful.  They wanted to play whatever role they could and that they wanted to keep up-to-date with what we were doing.  And so the conversations that the Secretary is having are along both those lines.

QUESTION: And were they helpful?  Did they second the U.S.’s request, for instance, with Arafat and his folks?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t know which ones might have been in touch so far.  Some of them may, some of them may not.

QUESTION: We know Mr.. Maher was?

MR. BOUCHER:  If I could point out, Foreign Minister Maher of Egypt saw Chairman Arafat yesterday.  The Secretary’s phone call with Maher was after the meeting with Arafat, so it was essentially hearing from Foreign Minister Maher about his trip to Ramallah.

QUESTION: Can you give us any insight on it?

MR. BOUCHER:  No, I’m not going to speak for the Egyptians.

QUESTION: Richard, one thing I don’t understand.  The Israelis reject this as insufficient.  Some of the groups that are supposedly carrying out these bombings say that they are not going to listen to this.  What’s the value of this?

MR. BOUCHER:  The value of this is ultimately shown by what kind of action follows.  I think we’ve made that point again and again.  So at this point, I can’t assess the value of this.  I can just say that it’s a statement along the lines of the kind of statements we wanted to see, but it always needs to be followed by effective action and that’s what we intend to go down and work with Chairman Arafat to make a reality.

QUESTION: Can I ask some of the things that ICRC mentioned this morning and were quite specific.  They wanted the Secretary to try and help them get access to prisoners and so on.  Is he planning to speak to the Israelis about any of the specific points that came up in the meetings this morning?

MR. BOUCHER:  Without trying to list all the specifics that he will discuss with the Israelis, because I think we need to discuss a lot of those with them and hear from them on some of these things that may be going on and find out why and what can be done.  The Secretary did indicate to the representatives that he intended to raise their concerns with the Israeli government, because as you know we have had concerns about some of the humanitarian situations as well. 

QUESTION: Can I just get back to the Al Aqsa?  Did the Israelis give any evidence, have they passed along any evidence related to yesterday’s bombing?

MR. BOUCHER:  If you promise not to ask me what it was, I would say that we have certainly been in touch with the Israelis about yesterday’s bombing.  We always keep in touch with them very closely on these events, and we have heard from them what they have found out.

QUESTION: Richard, without saying what it was, could you characterize it as linked….?

MR. BOUCHER:  It is the same question I was asked before, and I …

QUESTION: But over the last two weeks the Israelis have said that they have provided you with extra intelligence, extra evidence, that are clear links.  They have been passing around these documents to everybody.  We’ve talked a little bit about them -- but that link Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to some of these attacks, to the Al Aqsa Brigades, and can you say that this  evidence has sharpened your understanding of whether Arafat, or the PA is involved in some way?

MR. BOUCHER:  We have talked about these kind of issues before.  At this point we do talk to the Israelis a lot about information.   We heard in some of the Secretary’s discussions yesterday from the Israelis, about the kind of information that they are finding.  We have always viewed with great seriousness any involvement of people associated with the Palestinian Authority with terrorism and acts of violence.  We have made that quite clear in our statements, in our own reports, but I am not going to be able to characterize that at this moment.

QUESTION: Could you say whether it jives with what your own independent investigations have….

MR. BOUCHER:  No, I can’t try to characterize the information.

QUESTION: That’s something that we have been asking about now for almost two weeks…. 

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t know that you can.  Foreign governments pass us a variety of information.  It is not for us to pass out.  We acquire a variety of information from a variety of sources that in order to maintain those sources we are not able to pass out.  So, I never promised anybody information.  I know, we do a public report every six months on the PLO compliance act. 

QUESTION: So, this foreign government puts it on their web-site everyday (cross-talk).  They keep saying the Americans know that Yasser Arafat…

MR. BOUCHER:  You can ask anybody in the world to judge it.  There is no particular reason why I have to at this moment.

QUESTION: A policy question that I was trying to ask a while ago, was whether last night when Secretary Powell asked Arafat to condemn the bomb, was he asking Arafat to condemn a bomb that he, Mr. Powell, knew was set by Arafat?

MR. BOUCHER:  Again, you are asking about the kind of information and evidence that we may have on this particular bombing.  I am not in a position to go into that.  As I said before and as we have made public in a variety of ways, we will view with very great seriousness any involvement by anyone in the Palestinian Authority in acts of violence and terror.

QUESTION: Would Secretary Powell be sitting down with Yasser Arafat if he thought that he had himself ordered that bombing?

MR. BOUCHER:  This is the same question in a different way.  I am sorry I just can’t answer it.

QUESTION: You said that tomorrow you will be meeting with Arafat and other Palestinian leaders.  Is it conceivable that there would be meetings with Palestinians that Arafat himself wouldn’t be at or will all of these likely be some grouping of the people that are there with him including himself?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t know exactly how it will work out.  There are --  very often when we met down there before, the Secretary and the Chairman might go off for a meeting, the rest of us might meet with other Palestinians at the same time as -- a variety of things had happened.  I don’t know exactly how it will work tomorrow.

QUESTION: With whom you meet -- Is it just a combination of the sides that decide what kind of meetings will be held, do they say what ……

MR. BOUCHER:  As I said, we sort of worked out the schedule.

QUESTION: Richard, can I ask you a question?  It’s so obvious I don’t mean it to sound dumb, but why has having a meeting between the Secretary of State and Chairman Arafat become such a big deal?  The Secretary talks to him on the phone regularly.  Chairman Arafat has met over the past decade so routinely with senior officials in the American government including the previous President.  It is not as if we have never had intercourse of a diplomatic nature with Chairman Arafat.  Why has this become such a big deal?

MR. BOUCHER:  Frankly, I would say I don’t know that we made it a big deal.  We didn’t have a meeting today.  We didn’t think the circumstances were appropriate to have a meeting today. 

QUESTION: During the Vice President’s trip, the President (inaudible).

MR. BOUCHER:  In terms of the Vice President, the President and all that, that’s, you know, a different question that we have I think answered many times.  In terms of the Secretary, as I mentioned before, the Secretary has been a normal interlocutor and a frequent interlocutor, whether it’s on the phone or in person with Chairman Arafat.  That continues.  We just didn’t have a meeting today -- we are going to have it tomorrow.

QUESTION: Are you saying that this Administration has made a conscious decision to hold Arafat more accountable than previous ones in order to have these meetings?

MR. BOUCHER:  I don’t think I said that.

QUESTION: I am asking you.  Do you think that’s the reason why he…..

MR. BOUCHER:  I am not trying to characterize it that way.  I said the Secretary frequently had meetings.  We have answered questions about others.  The White House has answered questions about others at other times.

QUESTION: It seemed a foregone conclusion when we left Washington that this mission could not have any hope of progress.  Almost in the way Secretary Powell defined it, could not have any hope of progress without a meeting with Chairman Arafat.

MR. BOUCHER:  And that’s taking place tomorrow.

QUESTION:  Were there security considerations in terms of postponing the meeting Saturday as well as the political ones….

MR. BOUCHER:  No.  How is that?

QUESTION:  No?

MR. BOUCHER:  No.

QUESTION: There were no security consideration….

MR. BOUCHER:  The reasons for which  we did not have a meeting today was not a security reason, it was for exactly what we said.  We wanted time to assess the situation.  We were looking for a variety of -- we wanted time to assess the situation.  We made clear that all along we have been looking for statements and things like that, particularly last night in regard to the bombing, we were looking for one.  We got together today and said okay, where are we, what have we seen?  We decided the appropriate time to do the meeting was tomorrow.

QUESTION: Is Sharon on the schedule tomorrow night?

MR. BOUCHER:  It is possible, but it is not on the schedule yet.

(8:45pm, Jerusalem time)