Rice Plans Mideast Summit ‘Soon’: Hopes to Jump-Start `Road Map’ Peace Plan
By Bay Fang and Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune
Jan. 16–LUXOR, Egypt — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that she will hold a trilateral summit meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the next few weeks in an effort to restart Mideast peace talks, even as Israel announced plans to expand building in one of its controversial West Bank settlements.
“I will soon meet with Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert and with President [Mahmoud] Abbas to have discussions about the broad issues on the horizon . . . to move to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” she said in Luxor after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
At a time when the U.S. is under mounting pressure to engage more in the Israeli-Palestinian issue as it tries to calm tensions in Iraq and across the region, Rice expressed hope that the talks would jump-start movement on the 2003 “road map” peace plan, which has lain dormant for several years.
She stressed, however, that the meeting would be only an informal prelude to real negotiations and expressed hopes that the two sides would continue bilateral talks at the same time.
“I am very clear that the one thing that you do not want to do is to try to rush to formal negotiations before things are fully prepared, before people are fully prepared,” Rice said. “But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be progress as we’re moving along.”
The road map calls for the establishment of a transitional Palestinian state with temporary borders while other divisive issues are addressed. But responding to Palestinian concerns, U.S. officials have indicated they would contemplate speeding up movement within the plan, leaving open the option of moving directly to final discussions.
Palestinian leader Abbas, after his meeting with Rice on Sunday, was adamant about refusing “any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders, because we do not believe it to be a realistic choice that can be built upon.”
Cautious welcome
Rice’s announcement about the talks received a cautious welcome from both Israeli and Palestinian officials, but it was not immediately clear how a three-way meeting could revive the road map plan, whose requirements have not been met by either side.
On Monday, the Israeli government solicited bids for the construction of 44 homes in Maaleh Adumim, the largest Israeli settlement in the West Bank, again violating its commitment under the road map to halt all settlement activity. Such tenders have been issued with regularity since the road map was adopted more than three years ago.
Bilateral talks seen as key
After meeting Rice on Monday, Israel’s Olmert said that in tandem with the three-way talks, “we must, at the same time, continue the bilateral meetings” with the Palestinians.
“This meeting is not a replacement, and will not be a replacement, for the bilateral negotiations between us and the Palestinians,” Olmert said in remarks to lawmakers from his Kadima Party.
Saeb Erekat, an aide to Abbas, called the three-way meeting “a good idea.”
“In principle we accept it, we don’t oppose it, but we haven’t agreed on the time or the venue,” Erekat said.
Progress in a three-way meeting “depends on the issues that will be discussed,” Erekat said, suggesting that in order to succeed, such talks would have to go beyond gestures to the core issues dividing the two sides.
However, a recent summit between Olmert and Abbas did not deal with the substantive issues, but rather with goodwill gestures designed to bolster Abbas. They included removal of West Bank roadblocks and releasing Palestinian tax revenues frozen by the Israelis.
After meeting with Rice, Abbas complained that the Israeli side had yet to make good on its promises. “We are waiting for the application of our agreements,” he said.
Among the obstacles are the fact that Olmert and Abbas are considered politically weak and unlikely to have the power to offer concessions. According to the most recent opinion polls, Olmert’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 14 percent.
Abbas, meanwhile, is embroiled in ongoing violence with rival Palestinian faction Hamas, which has controlled the parliament since winning elections in January 2006.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas dismissed Rice’s initiative.
“She is bringing a perilous vision that everyone should be wary of,” he said. “It seems obvious that the Bush administration will not exert any pressures on Israel to offer any substantial concessions to the Palestinian people.”
Despite the obstacles, the U.S. remains hopeful about reopening dialogue between the two sides.
“There have not been many summit level meetings after all between the Palestinians and Israelis in the last years,” a senior U.S. official traveling with Rice said. “They haven’t sat for six years to talk about issues as ambitious as looking at what would be necessary to get a Palestinian state.”
In 2000, then-President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together for a peace summit at Camp David, where they were said to have gotten closer than ever to reaching a comprehensive settlement.
Soon after those talks faltered, the second Palestinian intifada uprising erupted, ending any serious hopes for peace even though meetings between then-Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak continued into the next year.
On Tuesday, Rice is to meet with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal before heading to Kuwait. There she is scheduled to convene the foreign ministers of Persian Gulf nations allied with the U.S., along with Egypt and Jordan, to discuss President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq and ways to further cooperate there.
bfang@tribune.com
jogreenberg@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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