In making her fourth trip to the Middle East in four months to try to breathe life into dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has opened the door to the possibility that the US might offer its own proposals to bridge the divide on some of the issues that have bedeviled the region since 1979.
"I don't rule out at some point that might be a useful thing to do," Rice told reporters in Washington before departing for Aswan, Egypt.
Of course, trying to impose a US-made solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for years, been the very thing that officials in the US President George W. Bush administration have steadfastly said they would not do.
But times have changed. The Iraq war has eroded support for the US in the Arab World. And many administration officials now believe that the only way the country can regain its standing among Arabs is if it is seen to be pushing for progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.
Several State Department officials say there is now an acknowledgment within the administration that the hands-off policy has caused prospects for peace to deteriorate.
"This is a place where if you leave things alone, they don't just stagnate," one administration official said. "They get worse."
Rice has been pushing for openings even as multiple doors have appeared to slam shut.
In the Bush administration's first term, Middle Eastern specialists said, the deal brokered by Saudi Arabia last month, in which moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to form a national unity government with the Islamist militant group Hamas, would have grounded all hopes for peace talks. Hamas is viewed as a terrorist organization by Israel and the US.
But Rice has pressed on anyway. While Israel has continued its boycott of the Palestinian government, the US has relented somewhat and agreed to talk to moderate members of the government, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister.
Rice is also prodding Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to start peace negotiations with Abbas and to negotiate with him separately from Hamas.
To get Palestinians to participate in the peace process, Rice has talked of late about a "political horizon," a diplomatic shorthand for the contours of a Palestinian state. Now Rice is pressing Arab countries to hold out a political horizon of their own that could give Israelis something to look forward to.
While in Egypt, Rice is expected to try to prod the US' Sunni allies to augment a 2002 Saudi peace proposal when the Arab League conducts its meeting in Riyadh this month.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is conducting his own tour of the Middle East, will also be there.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
FRUSTRATIONS: One in seven youths in China and Indonesia are unemployed, and many in the region are stuck in low-productivity jobs, the World Bank said Young people across Asia are struggling to find good jobs, with many stuck in low-productivity work that the World Bank said could strain social stability as frustrations fuel a global wave of youth-led protests. The bank highlighted a persistent gap between younger and more experienced workers across several Asian economies in a regional economic update released yesterday, noting that one in seven young people in China and Indonesia are unemployed. The share of people now vulnerable to falling into poverty is now larger than the middle class in most countries, it said. “The employment rate is generally high, but the young struggle to
ENERGY SHIFT: A report by Ember suggests it is possible for the world to wean off polluting sources of power, such as coal and gas, even as demand for electricity surges Worldwide solar and wind power generation has outpaced electricity demand this year, and for the first time on record, renewable energies combined generated more power than coal, a new analysis said. Global solar generation grew by a record 31 percent in the first half of the year, while wind generation grew 7.7 percent, according to the report by the energy think tank Ember, which was released after midnight yesterday. Solar and wind generation combined grew by more than 400 terawatt hours, which was more than the increase in overall global demand during the same period, it said. The findings suggest it is
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
RSS