Congress Considers Yanking Arafat Visa
Fox News Network, April 01, 2002
Congress Considers Yanking Arafat Visa
Monday, April 01, 2002
By Deborah Orin
WASHINGTON — sp;Two U.S. senators are planning a bipartisan push to
have Congress declare that Yasser Arafat has broken his obligation to push
for peace and punish him by yanking his right to a U.S. visitor's visa.
The Palestinian Authority's Washington office could
also be shut down and its assets seized under the measure pushed by Sens.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky..
"I think it is time for the United States, through
its Congress, to indicate that unless Yasser Arafat is prepared to take
the steps to stop the suicide bombing, we can't treat them in a normal
way," McConnell said.
"That would include eliminating visas, potentially
seizing whatever Palestinian assets there might be here in America, and
other steps to hinder travel to the U.S.," he said Sunday.
McConnell termed such moves "a logical response
to what's been perpetrated in the Middle East by these Palestinian extremists."
McConnell added that he and Feinstein had planned
to push a similar punish-Arafat measure before Sept. 11 but held off "in
deference" to the Bush administration after the terror attacks.
Their stances - and remarks by several other key
lawmakers over the past few days - indicate widespread support in Congress
for President Bush's view that Arafat hasn't done enough to stop the violence.
Over the past few days, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,
and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., have both stressed that Arafat bears
major responsibility for the latest Mideast bloodshed, while Israel is
properly defending itself.
There also appears to be growing support in Congress
for the view that Israel's war against terror is the same as America's.
"These terrorists . . . are cut from the same cloth
as the 19 terrorists who flew those planes and killed more than 3,000 Americans
on Sept. 11," Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., told Fox News Sunday.
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