Powell Meets With Mideast Leaders
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: It's about 5:00 p.m. in the Middle East and Secretary of State Colin Powell will soon leave Jordan for Kuwait where he will spend the night. Powell has already held numerous meetings in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank. Tomorrow he travels from Kuwait to Syria and then Saudi Arabia. Tuesday, he goes to Brussels to confer with NATO officials. CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel is traveling with the Secretary and joins us now by phone from Jordan. How did it go, Andrea?</s>ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're not privy to how it went so far at least here in Amman. Secretary Powell is just wrapping up his meeting with the Jordanian King Abdullah on his agenda here in Jordan- trying to help the Jordanian economy out. Jordan had been doing a lot trade with Iraq before the Gulf War and has suffered as a result of not being able to do very much trade with Iraq recently. And so, Secretary Powell is reassuring the Jordanians that the Bush administration will try to push through a Jordanian/U.S. Free Trade Pact. But earlier in the day the topic of conversation wasn't trade but rather violence of the end to violence. Secretary Powell meeting with both the Prime Minister Elect of Israel, Ariel Sharon this morning and following that went to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat trying to get both men, both leaders to do what they can to stop the violence. At the core of that, for the Bush administration, is the linkage that they see between the violence in -- between Israel and the Palestinians and the need to rebuild sanctions -- UN sanctions against Iraq. The Bush administration believing that a lesson -- until the violence in the territories end, they will have a very tough job of trying to rebuild a coalition at least within this region among Arab states to keep sanctions in place against Iraq, Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Andrea Koppel, thank you.