Bush Expects Israel To Respond To Iraq
Following a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Bush said Wednesday that he was certain Sharon would retaliate if Iraq launched an attack on Israel.
Mr. Bush gave no indication in an Oval Office news conference that he had tried to restrain Sharon, who already has said his country could not stand by if attacked.
"If Iraq attacks Israel tomorrow, I would assume the prime minister would respond," Mr. Bush said.
The president stressed that he still hopes to disarm Saddam Hussein peacefully, but he said the Iraqi leader was a "dangerous man," who had struck Israel before.
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Meeting with Ariel Sharon, Mr. Bush said if Iraq were to launch an "unprovoked" attack, Israel has the right to self-defense.
However, if Saddam lashes out in response to a U.S. attack on Iraq, the equation changes. In that case, the White House would prefer Israel stay out of the fight, but would only say publicly today the U.S. will do all it can to neutralize Saddam's weapons.
Sharon, in brief remarks, said Israel had never had a better friend in the White House than President Bush: "We never had such cooperation in everything as we have with the current administration."
Mr. Bush's father, by contrast, pressured Israel to stay out of the Gulf War in 1991, and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir complied, even after Iraq hit Israel with the Scud missiles.
"He's got a desire to defend himself," Mr. Bush said of Sharon's situation.
The president said Saddam has to understand the international community would not condone an attack on Israel or any other country. "He is a dangerous man. He has gassed his own people. That's why he has to be disarmed," Mr. Bush said.
On the Arab-Israel front, the president said Sharon had assured him he will turn over tax revenues withheld from the Palestinians to the Palestinian people. But Mr. Bush said there must be assurances the funds are not used to promote terror.
The president also said he would send Assistant Secretary of State William Burns to the Middle East to work on concrete security and peacemaking moves.
On the troubled border between Israel and Lebanon, the president expressed support for the Israeli government in the event of an escalation of attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas.
"We are making it clear we will fight terror wherever it exists," Bush said. "We expect Hezbollah not to attack our friend."
The guerrillas, who have been fighting a cross-border war with Israel, are armed by Iran and supported by Syria, two nations which are listed annually as sponsors of terror by the State Department.
Sharon, accompanied by Israeli National Security Council Chief Ephraim Halevi, arrived from Jerusalem early Tuesday for a three-day visit focusing mainly on security-related issues. Wednesday's call on the White House was his seventh since taking office in March 2001.
The United States has been pressing Israel to pull out of at least one of the six West Bank cities it still holds after taking over seven cities in June. It had already pulled out of Bethlehem, but maintains a military presence and often tight curfews on the rest.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, sent a letter to Sharon over the weekend calling for troop withdrawals, the easing of restrictions on the movements of Palestinians and the handover of hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues that Israel has withheld.
Although officials on both sides say the underlying Israel-U.S. relationship is rock solid, Israel has taken repeated criticism from Washington recently over its siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters, civilian casualties in Israeli strikes against Palestinian militants and repeated Israeli pledges to hit back hard against Iraq if it again attacks Israel.
Mr. Bush and his top advisers are anxious about the impact an Israeli response might have on Arab nations already uncomfortable about a prospective war with Iraq and resentful of what they consider the U.S. failure to change Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians.
Should another war break out, the United States will not be in active alliance with Arab armies, as it was in 1991. Israel now has what it says is a far more effective anti-missile system, the Arrow, developed in cooperation with the United States.
Many Israeli analysts say the country cannot again fail to react if it expects to be taken seriously in the future by hostile neighbors.
In other developments Wednesday in the Mideast:
"It's a victory for us," said Rivka Shimon, a relative of the family that lives on the land, indicating that for the first time, Sharon's government had given tacit approval to creation of a new settlement in the West Bank.
About 2,000 settlers and backers, most of them teenagers, gathered in a show of force to discourage a small number of soldiers from tearing down a cluster of three mobile homes, camping tents and a roofless synagogue placed there as the beginning of a new settlement near the Palestinian town of Nablus.
The Defense Ministry, which had ordered two-dozen outposts dismantled, agreed with the Settlers' Council to allow the dwellings to remain on this hilltop as long as protesters left the area, Shimon said. The families living here would be allowed to care for small agricultural areas during the day, she said.
Officials said Arafat told his Fatah movement leadership that longtime supporter Hani el-Hassan would take over. Several other ministers are to be replaced, but another key appointment from a June reshuffle, Finance Minister Salam Fayed, will remain in office, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.