Translated material
Pulses from Annapolis
Bush and Rice want to create a new state in time
Today, an international conference on the Middle East will begin at the Naval Academy of the American city of Annapolis, 50 kilometers from Washington. Even at the preparation stage, the forum became an event that will go down in the history of the Middle East settlement, regardless of the quality of the results achieved. The Americans not only acted as hosts of the conference and took on the role of the main mediator in the Middle East peace process, but tried to attract as high-ranking representatives of fifty countries of the world as possible to participate. The Russian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who held talks in Washington yesterday with American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.Yesterday evening, all participants went to the State Department, where a gala dinner was given on behalf of Condoleezza Rice. This year, the Secretary of State spent several long periods in the Middle East, where she conducted difficult negotiations. She put all her irrepressible energy into this conference. Condoleezza Rice, despite the objections of Vice President Dick Cheney, insisted on holding the event no later than the end of November, that is, almost exactly a year before the US presidential elections, although the Israelis and Palestinians, for whose sake all this was started, are still far from agreement about the creation of the state of Palestine. But Bush and Rice do not rule out that this state will be created by the end of 2008, although no official goal is set to meet this time frame.
During yesterday's dinner, George W. Bush gave a speech in which, once again during the day, he expressed “optimism” that “a new democratic state will be created,” but for this “we must redouble our efforts so that dreams of peace in the region (the Middle East. - Ed. ) became a reality." The President said this based on fresh impressions from meetings already held in Rice’s presence with the heroes of the event, each individually: with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and with President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. Today Bush will meet with both at the same time, and then it will become clear whether they are ready to sign a joint final declaration.
The Palestinians insisted that the declaration be as specific as possible, down to the date of the establishment of their independent state. The Israelis offered a general text of peaceful intentions, without obligations or timelines. Too much work still needs to be done to determine the borders of the Palestinian state, the problem of returning Palestinian refugees to it and what city will become its capital (radical Arabs call all of Jerusalem, more moderate Palestinians only its eastern part, and the Israelis do not want to divide the city).
The problem is also that the compromises necessary to reach agreements are opposed by both the Israeli and Palestinian opposition. The leader of the right-wing Russian-speaking party “Israel is Our Home,” Avigdor Lieberman, who is part of the coalition government of the Jewish state and serves as minister of strategic planning, openly expressed the hope that the conference would fail and would become just “another opportunity for joint photography” of famous politicians. In the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a rally “against Annapolis” was held yesterday, at which the leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other radical organizations called all conference participants “champions of the United States and Zionists.” By the way, despite doubts, even those Arab countries that do not maintain relations with Israel sent their delegations to Annapolis: Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal went from Saudi Arabia, and Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad went from Syria. This caused disappointment in Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Arabs to boycott the event.
Meanwhile, a rumor appeared in Annapolis that the Americans still want to squeeze out of the Israelis and Palestinians some semblance of concrete agreements, for which sake, if not the leaders of the delegations, then second persons may remain in the United States for a couple of more days. From the Palestinians, this is the former prime minister and ex-speaker of parliament, Ahmad Krea, and from the Israelis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Tzipi Livni. Yesterday afternoon the two of them visited Condoleezza Rice at her Washington home. However, the Israelis do not plan to continue negotiations the very next day after the end of the conference. “If there is an agreement on the next round of negotiations, they will take place in the region, and not immediately after the conference,” Yaron Hamburg, a member of the Israeli delegation, told Vremya Novostey. -- We view the conference in Annapolis as an impulse necessary to advance the negotiation process. But controversial issues such as those that exist between us and the Palestinians cannot be resolved in two or three days.”
However, according to Vremya Novostei, both Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert will stay in Washington for the day. Both will meet with George W. Bush again. But the Israelis intend to discuss not so much the Palestinian issue as other regional problems, in particular the Iranian nuclear program. As for Palestine, a conference of countries ready to provide financial assistance to the future state will be held in Paris in December. The Israelis only welcome this.