Yasser Arafat

Secretary of State Colin Powell says Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — in a letter this week — has "accepted responsibility" for last month's failed attempt by Palestinians to smuggle in some 50 tons of Iranian weapons.

The attempt to bring in the arms aboard a small freighter, the Karine-A, has badly strained an already tenuous U.S.-Palestinian relationship.

Secretary Colin Powell

Mr. Powell's remarks were his most detailed thus far about the Arafat letter, which was delivered to the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem last Sunday and is clearly aimed at repairing ties with Washington.

The Secretary, appearing before a congressional subcommittee, said Mr. Arafat had reversed previous denials and accepted responsibility — not personal, but as chairman of the Palestinian Authority — for the smuggling affair.

Mr. Powell also said there was a commitment that there would be no repeat of the smuggling incident, though he made clear the administration is looking to the Palestinian leader to do more improve the climate for peace-making efforts.

"The evidence," he said, "is so overwhelming that he has to accept responsibility as the chairman of the Palestinian Authority for what happened. And we want him to foreswear any acquisitions like that in the future, and he has said he would on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. We also want to see more done with respect to arrests of known terrorists and killers. And he's working on a list a couple of lists that have been provided to him. And we want to see these people in jails that are real jails, and not just revolving doors where they're back out on the street three days later."

Under questioning, the secretary of state expressed understanding for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's refusal to have a political dialogue with Mr. Arafat until he can get "some level of security." However, he also resisted a suggestion by a panel member that the United States cut off aid to the Palestinians as a lever to get an anti-terrorist crackdown.

Secretary Powell said, "I don't know that it would change things markedly. It's a tough situation, because if you want him to act responsibly and to arrest people and to hold them in jail, and if you want him to bring security to different places and you want him to have a police force to do that, then you have to fund it. So by not funding it, and if the Europeans stop funding it, and everybody cut off funding, then it would be hard to say to him: now go use your 40,000 man security force to do this, that, or the other."

U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians totals about $130 million a year and is largely channeled through the United Nations and non-governmental organizations.

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