Saeb Erekat.(Interview)

Saeb Erekat was the Palestinians' leading peace negotiator with Israel throughout much of the past decade. Since resigning from that post in May, he's watched the ups and downs of Washington's Mideast initiative- -from the hopeful summit in Jordan, where President George W. Bush vowed to "ride herd" until peace is achieved, to the crush of subsequent violence-with a mixture of anguish and deja vu. Erekat, who is just 48 years old and remains a lawmaker in the Palestinian Legislative Council, hasn't lost hope. But he does believe that the international peace plan known as the Roadmap will succeed only if Bush has the political backbone to compel Israelis and Palestinians to stop fighting and accept broad compromises. NEWSWEEK's Dan Ephron spoke to Erekat about the road ahead. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Is the Roadmap dead?

EREKAT: No, it's not dead. But if we keep failing to implement it, it will join [previous peace initiatives like] the Mitchell report and the Tenet plan in the archives. That shouldn't happen. I don't understand why we haven't seen the U.S. imposing the mechanism for implementation, a time line and so on. This is Powell's third trip here. Why can't he say: "You guys stay in your corner and you in your corner, you begin with a ceasefire by the following date and you withdraw on this date"?

Why isn't Washington pressing harder on both sides?

I think they realize the difficulties inherent in Sharon's reservations to the Roadmap. The [Bush] administration is very worried about not succeeding.

Are domestic political considerations a factor?

I thought this was true, but I'm not sure anymore. I was told by some people in the pro-Israel lobby in Washington that they wrote a letter saying they encourage President Bush to implement the Roadmap. So I'm not sure this is a big issue. In the Arab world after Iraq, all Arabs look at the Roadmap as a test for the U.S. They sent 350,000 troops to Iraq, why can't they send 35 monitors to the West Bank? The U.S. will be judged not by how it made war in the region but whether it can bring peace.