Sunday October 21 3:41 PM ET

Powell Expects Israel Troop Pullback

WASHINGTON (AP) - Israel has told the United States it will withdraw from its recent incursions deep into the West Bank, a commitment necessary for the prospect of a cease-fire with the Palestinians, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

Powell, attending an Asian-Pacific economic summit in China, said he spoke earlier with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

``Hopefully the Israelis will be able to leave the territory that they have occupied recently,'' Powell said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

Sharon ``said he did not plan to stay in those areas. And I hope they will finish what they're doing, remove themselves as quickly as they can so that we can get back to a process that hopefully will lead to a cease-fire,'' Powell said.

Also Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York that Israel does not intend to stay in the areas it entered, a spokesman for Israel's U.N. Mission said.

Peres also was speaking Sunday night at a national meeting of the American Jewish Congress in Washington.

An aide to Yasser Arafat said the Palestinian leader told Powell on Sunday that Washington must pressure Israel to withdraw.

``This issue will be a test (of) the willingness of the U.S. to keep its coalition, or to sacrifice the Arabs and Muslims to satisfy'' Israel, said Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh.

He was referring to U.S. concerns that Israeli-Palestinian fighting could hinder efforts to maintain the support of moderate Arab nations for U.S. operations against Afghanistan's Taliban government and terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

In the region, Israeli tanks moved deeper into West Bank in the widest operation against the Palestinians in years.

Three Palestinians were killed Sunday, and the Palestinian Health Ministry said a teen-age boy wounded in fighting last month died of his wounds.

The assault is in retaliation for the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister by a radical PLO faction.

``The United States position over a long period of time has been to point out that targeted assassinations of the kind that we have seen there is not in the best interest of trying to find a way to move forward with the peace process,'' Powell said.

The assassination Wednesday of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi ``got things all off course again. So I'm hoping we can bring the violence down.''

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011021/wl/us_mideast_1.html

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 21, 2001

Answers

``The United States position over a long period of time has been to point out that targeted assassinations of the kind that we have seen there is not in the best interest of trying to find a way to move forward with the peace process,'' Powell said.

OF COURSE WHATS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR US TOO; YEAH RIGHT! GET A GRIP COLIN!

-- Steve McClendon (ke6bjd@yahoo.com), October 21, 2001.