Bush Demands Arafat's Ouster Before U.S. Backs a New State; Israelis Welcome Tough Line
A senior administration official said that an earlier draft of the speech did not include an explicit call for Mr. Arafat's removal, but that the back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings last week had "crystallized" the American resolve that there be new leadership.

The official said Mr. Bush inserted the sentence calling for the removal of Mr. Arafat as a precondition to Palestinian statehood late Saturday afternoon in his private office in the White House residence.

Some Palestinian leaders complained that the demands were so broad — from free elections to an end to corruption to the breaking up of terrorist groups targeting Israel — that Mr. Bush's speech could only be viewed as a stalling tactic.

Notably missing from the speech was any firm timetable to move toward Palestinian statehood, which President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had pressed on Mr. Bush during a meeting at Camp David earlier this month. But the lack of a timetable was another victory, for Mr. Sharon, who has long said that talk of statehood is "premature."

Mr. Bush and administration officials were vague about the practicalities of how the United States would help the Palestinians pursue those reforms. An administration official would say only that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would put together a "work plan" that could include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other donor countries to build a Palestinian state, similar to the process that the United States is leading in Afghanistan.

Administration officials did not specify the standards for determining whether the reforms have been met, and they left unclear who would be the final judge — the United States, Israel, the United Nations or another group.

Officials also refused to answer questions about whether the Bush administration would now cease all contacts with Mr. Arafat, who regularly talks to Secretary Powell. "We'll have to see," one senior official said. But some administration officials said they would be willing to consider allowing Mr. Arafat to remain as a figurehead leader of the Palestinian people, an idea Israeli officials have suggested they will support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/25/international/middleeast/25PREX.html