Lt. Gen. William Ward, the U.S. Army officer recently appointed to advise the Palestinians on building their security forces, will work  "with the Europeans, with the Egyptians, with the Jordanians who are going to be involved in helping to train and equip the Palestinian security forces," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today (Wednesday, Feb. 9).

In an interview with Fox News' James Rosen in Paris, Rice added that the focus of Ward's mission "will be to finally get the Palestinian security forces to a place where they can really perform."

"When I was talking to President Abbas," Rice added, "one of his strongest points to me was that the security forces in the Palestinian territories are variable in their quality, that they need to be turned into a professional force that will be capable of really fighting terrorism and of keeping the peace. And so that is General Ward's number one task."

Asked how large a staff the general would have, Rice said she planned a meeting in Washington with him to discuss that very subject. "I suspect that he can use a lot of the existing infrastructure; after all, we have missions in the Middle East, in Israel and a consulate in Jerusalem that deals with Palestinian issues."  

Later, at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rice was asked if NATO had a role to play in the Middle East.

She responded: "Well, I hope we get to the day that we're talking about some kind of mission to keep the peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That would be a very good day, indeed. For now, of course, we are working on the very more rudimentary side of this, which is to get the Palestinian security forces trained. I think that's principally going to be a mission for the regional powers and for the United States, although I'm certain there will be contributions from the Europeans to that training and equipping of the Palestinian security forces.

"It is also, of course, something that we should look to the future to see what role eventually any of the many organizations that we may want to see involved, should we get to the point of a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

I've been very gratified by the discussions we've had here because there is such great political support and such unified political support for the steps that the parties have to take, starting with the training and equipping of the security forces of the Palestinians, the building of democratic institutions there, the reconstruction of the Palestinian economy, the peaceful carrying out the Israeli withdrawal and disengagement plan from the Gaza and the four settlements in the West Bank. And there is just tremendous political unity about supporting those steps as we go forward, and then also unity about getting back onto the roadmap where, of course, the Quartet would have a major role.

"So we had good discussions of that. But, again, I think we are trying to take this one step at a time. We are still, unfortunately, a long way from the point at which we're talking about monitoring a peace agreement."

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan also was asked about the nature of Ward's mandate.  He replied: "General Ward will be there as the security coordinator to help with some of the training and equipping of security forces, and he'll be there to help facilitate and monitor some of the cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. 

"Obviously, there are some that are going to remain intent on trying to derail the advancement to the two-state vision the President outlined," McClellan said." And those issues need to be addressed, and I think that you've (been) shown  a commitment from the parties in the region to work together to address these issues."         —Donald H. Harrison