Cheney takes active role, ponders Arafat meeting

JERUSALEM -- Vice President Dick Cheney took a more direct role in Middle East peace efforts Monday, urging Israel to ease economic hardships inflicted on innocent Palestinians and Yasser Arafat end all Palestinian terror against Israel.

Cheney pondered a possible meeting with the Palestinian leader as both sides seemed to be inching toward a cease-fire.

Those close to the process said Arafat was eager for a meeting, and the decision was up to the Americans.

Such a meeting could occur today, before Cheney leaves for Turkey. It was not clear whether the vice president would come to Arafat's West Bank headquarters of Ramallah or meet him at another location.

It would be the highest Bush administration contact with Arafat.

U.S. officials said much remained to be worked out before a meeting could take place. The logistics alone are daunting.

And it seemed unlikely to take place unless Cheney believed it could hasten a cease-fire, U.S. officials said.

The vice president, nearing the end of a 10-day, 11-nation tour of the Middle East, arrived in Israel Monday afternoon and met immediately with Anthony Zinni, President Bush's special Mideast envoy.

"Gen. Zinni is optimistic that we're making some progress in the Middle East," Bush said in St. Louis after conferring by telephone with Cheney and Zinni.

Bush said it would be up to Zinni to decide whether the vice president should meet with Arafat.

Cheney and Zinni shared a 45-minute car ride from the airport into Jerusalem, and later had a working dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Zinni has been shuttling between Sharon and Arafat in hopes of brokering a cease fire to end nearly 18 months of violence. But a truce has proved elusive.

Much mistrust remains between the two sides, and U.S. officials suggest a resolution will be neither quick nor easy.

There was optimism that the sides were again meeting, with a three-way security session held under Zinni's oversight on Monday, and another one scheduled for Wednesday.

Still, in Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We continue to expect a complete withdrawal" to pre-September 2000 lines.

Israeli troops have been pulling out of West Bank population centers, and Israel announced during the weekend departure from all except Bethlehem. Palestinians in that city reported Monday that a withdrawal had begun from there, with Israeli tanks pulling away from positions a few hundred yards away from the Church of the Nativity, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Cheney was greeted by Sharon at a ceremony in front of the prime minister's office after Cheney's car ride from the airport outside Tel Aviv.

"Both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered mightily," Cheney said, standing alongside Sharon. "Both peoples deserve a better future."

Cheney called on Arafat "to renounce once and for all the use of violence as a political weapon and to exert a one-hundred percent effort to stamp out terrorism."

But in the spiraling cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings and increasingly harsh Israeli reprisals, Cheney had a message for Sharon as well. He said he would be talking to Sharon "about the steps that Israel can take to alleviate the devastating economic hardship being experienced by innocent Palestinian men, women and children."

For his part, Sharon praised the United States for its efforts to root out terrorism. Terrorism against Israelis, Sharon said, "knows no mercy."

"I have in the past declared that in order to achieve a real, just and durable peace, I would be willing to make painful compromises," Sharon said.

"But we cannot make any compromise on the security of our citizens and their right to live without the threat of terrorism and violence."

Cheney came to Israel from Kuwait, the final of nine Arab states he has visited. He carried a request from Arab leaders that he push the Israelis to allow Arafat to leave Palestinian areas to attend an Arab summit in Beirut, Lebanon, later this month.

In St. Louis, Bush acknowledged the view of Arab leaders who told Cheney that the United States should not take military action against Iraq and its suspected program to develop weapons of mass destruction. But the president said he was determined not to let Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "hold the United States and our friends and allies hostage. ... What I said about the axis of evil is what I mean. I can't be any more plain about it."

Bush, in his State of the Union speech, labeled Iraq, North Korea and Iran members of an axis of evil that the United States would not allow to threaten Americans.