The United States, though isolated, is pressing on with its effort to force the removal of Yasser Arafat, with US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying Washington was not talking to the Palestinian chairman now and had no plans to do so in the future.
"I worked for 18 months to try to put in place a plan that would allow Chairman Arafat to demonstrate his leadership," he told CBS "Face the Nation." "We would have been way along if the violence had been brought down. Chairman Arafat simply did not seize any of these opportunities to bring the violence under control." "At the moment we are not dealing with him," said Powell on "Fox News Sunday." Asked if the United States would resume contacts with Arafat, Powell said: "I don't expect so."
The United States is virtually alone and has come in for considerable criticism for its view, shared by a hard line Israeli government, that Arafat must go.
In a statement issued after a summit in Canada, the Group of Eight industrial nations said Palestinians must adopt democracy but failed to get behind the effort to replace Arafat.
The British Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to call for Arafat’s removal saying: "It's for the Palestinians to elect the people that they choose to elect,"
Saudi Arabia, Washington's main Gulf Arab ally, opposes replacing Arafat, the head of Saudi intelligence was quoted as saying in an interview published on Saturday.
Prince Nawaf bin Abdul-Aziz told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Bush could complicate Middle East peace efforts by demanding that Palestinians dump the leader they elected in 1996.
"The kingdom is against any intervention in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. We must leave it to them to decide who their president is and not to have any power such as the United States impose one on them," Nawaf said.
Arafat himself today offered to meet with Bush "any time, anywhere" to promote Middle East peace.
"I would like to meet President Bush any time at a place of his choice so we can work towards comprehensive peace," Arafat, speaking by satellite link, told an audience of businessmen and political leaders in the Swiss mountain resort of Crans Montana.
"Of course we are against terrorism, we are making every effort to end terrorist acts, particularly against Israel," he said in reply to a question.
Arafat has called elections for January 2003 and declared himself a candidate. Opinion polls put him in the lead.
Pressed on how the United States would react if Arafat won, US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press": "The United States will of course respect democratic processes but the fact is that if a leadership emerges that will not deal with the problem of terrorism, the United States can do nothing to move this process forward."