U.S. President George Bush will not meet with Yasser Arafat during the upcoming UN General Council sessions in New York. Administration officials told Reuters that Prime Minister Sharon\'s cancellation of his visit to Washington and meeting there with Bush had much to do with Bush\'s decision not to meet Arafat. Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval said that there\'s no question that Israel is happy with the decision, \"because a meeting between Bush and Arafat would be perceived as encouragement for continued terrorism, but in any event it wouldn\'t have been a catastrophe even if there would be such a meeting.\"
Asked about rumors of a new American diplomatic initiative, Shoval said, \"Based on my talks last week in the U.S., I don\'t think there will be any such plan. There will be a speech [by Powell in the UN], but there won\'t be a plan, in my opinion, because they don\'t have a plan. I hope that the speech will deal with the [Israeli-Palestinian] issue only in general terms. It\'s not worth it for them to have a plan, because history shows that all the American plans that were made without prior coordination with Israel, such as the Marshall, Rogers, and Reagan plans, never worked. So I don\'t think they\'ll try it again.\"
Asked about rumors of a new American diplomatic initiative, Shoval said, \"Based on my talks last week in the U.S., I don\'t think there will be any such plan. There will be a speech [by Powell in the UN], but there won\'t be a plan, in my opinion, because they don\'t have a plan. I hope that the speech will deal with the [Israeli-Palestinian] issue only in general terms. It\'s not worth it for them to have a plan, because history shows that all the American plans that were made without prior coordination with Israel, such as the Marshall, Rogers, and Reagan plans, never worked. So I don\'t think they\'ll try it again.\"