US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday he believed the Arab world and European allies had overcome their initial "shock" at President George W. Bush's endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial disengagement plan.
In an exclusive interview with AFP, Powell said developments since Bush's embrace of the proposal showed that despite early misgivings, the international community was ready to use the Sharon plan to jump start the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
"People are now looking at how we can use this opportunity, how can we go forward," Powell said, maintaining that the Israeli prime minister's proposal and the president's decision to accept it had jolted the languishing "roadmap" for peace back to life.
"What the President did with Prime Minister Sharon was to essentially break us out of this cycle that was really going nowhere," Powell said. "We were talking a lot about the Middle East peace process (but) we weren't making any progress."
Arabs were enraged and Europeans dismayed when Bush endorsed Sharon's plan to withdraw entirely from the Gaza Strip but maintain some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and implied that Palestinian refugees must forfeit their longstanding demand to be able to return to land they lost when Israel was created in 1948.
The elimination of settlements and the right of return had been key Palestinian negotiating points and many saw Bush's embrace as sabotaging their position heading into eventual peace talks with the Israelis.
But Powell said he believed the anger and scepticism had been assuaged, particularly after the backers of the roadmap - the international diplomatic quartet on the Middle East - and Jordan's King Abdullah II offered at least qualified support for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
"I think to a large extent it has," he said when asked if he saw an easing of the resolute opposition to the proposal, adding that people had initially overlooked Bush's vow not to prejudice the outcome of peace talks.
Instead, they had focused only on the president's decision to accept certain "realities" that made a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel impossible.
"That was a shock and we understand that and we knew that would get attention," Powell said.
"Now that a couple of weeks have passed and we've had a chance to reinforce the president's principal message (on a negotiated settlement and his commitment to the roadmap) I think that starts to settle things down".
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