WASHINGTON, May 4: The Palestinian Authority and Israel are reported to have endorsed the idea of an international peace conference on the Middle East, but a debate has erupted here over whether the Bush administration is already seeking to downgrade the proposal.
When the proposal was outlined by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday the word “conference” was used to describe the suggested gathering of foreign ministers of the Quartet — the US, the UN, Europe and Russia, Israel and Palestinians, and many Arab states. But on Friday, the term “meeting” was employed by most administration officials.
President George W. Bush himself suggested that Secretary Powell had “talked about a ministerial meeting.”
“It’s just a series of ongoing discussions to help solidify the visions that have been expressed by not only the United States, but the Europeans; but more importantly, the visions expressed by Israel, the Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. And so there’s going to be a lot of discussions and a lot of meetings,” Mr Bush said.
While it would be fair to say that the proposal, when it was announced, might not have been fully thought through, some of the downplaying might be linked to the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is due in Washington on Sunday and scheduled to meet Mr Bush on Tuesday.
Mr Sharon is said to be bringing his own “peace proposal” that would rule out an Israeli return to the pre-1967 borders, a proposition that has been the bedrock of the United Nations resolutions and also of all other peace formulae discussed so far.
Mr Sharon is clearly interested in pre-empting any move that would run contrary to his idea of peace and the establishment of an independent Palestine state, which he envisages as pockets of territory hemmed in the Israeli security apparatus.
It is believed that the Bush administration might push the idea at the proposed meeting or conference that an interim agreement should be reached, somewhat on the lines of a plan worked out some weeks ago by Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei that was based on an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state in something like half of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Another aspect of the conference proposal is that it does not indicate whether the meeting would be confined to discussing the Palestinian-Israel track or include the Israel-Syria and the Israel-Lebanon problems. The Abdullah plan, which outlines full Arab recognition of Israel in return for full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, was also silent on these aspects of the Middle East question.
Egypt’s ambassador to the US, Nabil Fahmy, has been quoted in The Washington Post on Saturday as saying that Arab countries are unwilling to engage in “negotiations about negotiations again. If the conference is a useful tool, it is something people will all gather around. If we go back to focusing on procedure rather than solutions, it will not fulfil its expectations and get their support.”
The New York Times said there were divisions within the Bush administration on how to proceed. The paper pointed out that the divisions were now taken so much for granted outside the White House that press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked at his regular briefing on Friday whether Secretary Powell’s announcement about the conference had even been authorized. “Of course,” Mr Fleischer replied.