| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 15, 2001 |
Powell to Deliver Important Speech on Mideast Next week |
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As the U.S.-led military strikes are making swift progress in Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to deliver an important speech next Monday to outline U.S. policy on the Middle East conflict, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
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As the U.S.-led military strikes are making swift progress in Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to deliver an important speech next Monday to outline U.S. policy on the Middle East conflict, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
Powell, who will deliver the speech at the University of Louisville, is expected to set out his vision of a future for both Israel and the Palestinians who have been locked in a conflict that has lasted for more than half century, the officials said.
According to Israeli sources, the major change in U.S. policy, apart from public talk of a Palestinian state, would be to insist on going straight into the Mitchell peace plan without waiting for a week of total calm, as demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Mitchell plan, presented by an international commission headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, calls for an unconditional ceasefire, a six-week cooling off period and a freeze on Jewish settlements and various confidence-building measures, before a return to peace talks.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is widely believed to be a major trigger for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Many Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, have been urging the United States to remove the root cause of terrorism by helping settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fair and timely way.
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