US President George W. Bush announced on Monday a US-led international conference which would take place before the end of the year to resolve what he said were all the outstanding issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The ambitious conference would bring together Israelis, Palestinians and Arab governments in an as yet unannounced location. The Middle East group, the Quartet -- made up of the US, the UN, Russia and the EU -- will play a central role.
President Bush's announcement comes only days before the Quartet's special envoy, former UK prime minister Tony Blair attends his first meeting of the group of four. Blair has been pushing Bush for the past five years to take an active role in trying to end the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.
In his White House speech yesterday, Bush gave his blessing to Blair's new career as an unpaid Middle East envoy. The president has adopted a mainly hands-off approach to the conflict over the past six years. His intervention now, with 18 months to go before his presidency ends, comes at an inauspicious point for a peace deal, with the Palestinians divided between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Hamas is unlikely to be invited as Bush said it must first renounce violence and recognize Israel.
President Bush called the present time "a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice." To encourage them to choose Fatah over Hamas, he promised an increase in aid to Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas, and a separate donor conference that would include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
NEW CRUSADE
In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, called Bush's remarks "a new crusade by Bush against the Palestinian people" and appealed to the Arab world to confront it.
Bush has asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will chair the conference, to concentrate on his new initiative.
The president is proposing negotiations that would include the future of Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians, and of the 3.5 million Palestinian refugees.
NEW BORDER
The border between Israel and the West Bank would be reached through mutual agreement.
He called on Abbas to arrest militants and for Israel to remove Jewish outposts from the West Bank, which are usually a precursor to the establishment of new Jewish settlements, and for a freeze on the expansion of existing settlements. Israel should, where possible, "reduce their footprint" in the West Bank.
Blair is to attend his first Quartet meeting in Lisbon tomorrow after visiting Brussels, Rome and Madrid.
Blair has been arguing with the Bush administration privately for months for the US to take a new diplomatic approach.
He proposed a move straight to major negotiations instead of the incremental approach Bush had favored, in which both Palestinians and Israelis embarked on confidence-building measures, of which the most important was an end to violence.
Bush had planned to make the speech when Blair was appointed to head the Quartet on June 27, but it was delayed to allow time to consider the implications of the Hamas takeover of Gaza.
Blair has told the US that this process needs micro-managing. He has also negotiated the increase in aid for the Palestinian president and will parcel some of this out in return for improvements by the Palestinians in governance and rule of law.
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