JUST 24 hours after securing an agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to resume long-stalled peace talks, U.S. President Bush invited the pair to the White House to ceremonially inaugurate the first formal, direct negotiations in seven years.
Capping an intense flurry of diplomacy that salvaged a joint Israeli-Palestinian agreement at nearby Annapolis, Maryland, to launch a fresh round of talks, Bush planned to meet separately yesterday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and finally to get them together for an afternoon session declaring the talks formally under way.
After meeting their own low expectations for the Annapolis conference amid intense skepticism, Bush administration officials crowed with delight.
“What has been remarkable about this process is that they are now ready to go,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told ABC during a round of TV interviews yesterday morning in which she praised unprecedented support for the peace process from Arab states.
After inaugurating the negotiations at the White House, the two sides have agreed to continue with a meeting in the region Dec. 12, Rice said Tuesday.
Bush, along with Rice, had earlier salvaged a “joint understanding” between the Israelis and Palestinians, who had remained far apart on the details of the statement until the last minute.
But with prodding from the American side, Olmert and Abbas — troubled leaders with fragile mandates for peace — told international backers and skeptical Arab neighbors they are ready for hard bargaining toward an independent Palestinian state in the 14 months Bush has left in office.
The two Mideast leaders were circumspect but optimistic.
“I had many good reasons not to come here,” Olmert told diplomats, including those from Arab states that do not recognize Israel like Saudi Arabia and Syria. “Memory of failures in the near and distant past weighs heavy upon us.”
Abbas, meanwhile, recited a familiar list of Palestinian demands, including calls for Israel to end the expansion of Jewish settlements on land that could be part of an eventual state called Palestine and to release some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Negotiating teams will hold their first session in the region in just two weeks Dec. 12, and Olmert and Abbas plan to continue one-on-one discussions they began earlier this year. In addition, many of the same nations and organizations attending Tuesday’s conference will gather again on Dec. 17 in Paris to raise money for the perpetually cash-strapped Palestinians.
To attract Arab backing, the Bush administration included a session in the conference devoted to “comprehensive” peace questions — a coded reference to other Arab disputes with Israel. Syria came to the conference intending to raise its claim to the strategic Golan Heights, seized by Israel in 1967, and Lebanon wanted to talk about its border dispute with Israel. Rice told reporters that Syria and Lebanon spoke up, but she gave no details.
But in a sign of the difficult road ahead, Abbas’ speech was immediately rejected by Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction that stormed to power in the Gaza Strip in June, a month before Bush announced plans for the peace conference.
(SD-Agencies)
