World powers reach agreement on Mideast conference
By Tahir Mirza
WASHINGTON, May 3: Agreement to convene an international conference on the Middle East was announced here on Thursday afternoon following a meeting between the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia.
Talk of such a conference had been in the air ever since US Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the Middle East last month, but the announcement came as something of a surprise.
It coincided with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s first move out of his Ramallah compound, which had been pounded by Israeli tanks and besieged for more than a month, and with a show of Congressional backing for Israel.
The announcement also followed a visit to the US by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and his meeting with President Bush.
Secretary Powell met the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, European Union foreign policy head Javier Solana and Foreign Minister Josep Pique of Spain, which currently holds the EU’s presidency.
The US, UN, EU and Russia have collectively been dubbed as “the quartet”, with echoes of the Big Four terminology of the Cold War days.
The conference, to be attended by Palestinians and Israel as well as Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states, is likely to be held next month and will be at the foreign ministers’ level.
This will be the first international effort at Mideast peace since the Madrid conference of 1991. Former US president Bill Clinton had taken upon himself to broker peace talks single-handed, and the Bush administration also so far had appeared to disdain suggestions of including European countries in any negotiating effort.
But events of the past month, especially the siege of Ramallah and the large-scale death and destruction wrought by Israel in Jenin, widened the gulf between the US and Europe, and the conference may be one way to prevent Europe from adopting a more pro-Palestine attitude.
Crown Prince Abdullah’s visit, during which he criticized America’s pro-Israel bias, also apparently played a part in moving Washington towards a more cooperative international peace move.
The United Nations, rebuffed by Israel in its move to send a fact-finding delegation to Jenin, would have welcomed the international conference as a means of getting back into the picture. It is clear that to make the international conference succeed, the UN, Europe and Russia will have to prevent its agenda from being hijacked by Israel.
After a meeting of “the quartet” at the State Department on Thursday afternoon, Secretary Powell told reporters they intended to proceed simultaneously on three fronts —— restore security so that Israelis and Palestinians could live free from terror and violence, and rebuilding the Palestinian security apparatus; provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people and rebuild strong, accountable, democratic and market-oriented institutions as the basis for a vibrant Palestinian state; and promote serious, accelerated negotiations toward a political settlement.
CONGRESS: Both the US Senate and the House of Representatives on Thursday passed resolutions backing Israel despite, it is said, White House pressure to try to dissuade the two houses from going ahead with the resolutions.
The House measure condemned the Palestinian leadership for “ongoing support of terror” and questioned whether Yasser Arafat was a “viable partner for peace”.
The Senate resolution, a little less blatantly, asked the Palestinian Authority to “dismantle the terrorist infrastructure” and act in cooperation with the US to stop violence.
The voting in the Senate was 94 in favour with just two against and in the House, 352 members backed the resolution and 21 opposed it.
The voting reflects the Israeli lobby’s clear influence over American lawmakers. The announcement of an international conference may take some of the sting out of the resolutions where the Arab countries are concerned.
