Tuesday, October 24. 2006
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
US Foreign Policy on Tuesday, October 24. 2006
While a German Intelligence analyst negotiates with Hezbollah for the release of Israel's kidnapped soldiers, what has the United States been doing lately in regard to the Middle East conflicts? Recently Secretary of State Condoleezza visited Israel for the sixth time in the course of a year and a half, writes Gideon Levy in Haaretz and then asks about those trips:
What has come of it? Has anyone asked her about this? Does she ask herself? It is hard to understand how the secretary of state allows herself to be so humiliated. It is even harder to understand how the superpower she represents allows itself to act in such a hollow and useless way. The mystery of America remains unsolved: How is it that the United States is doing nothing to advance a solution to the most dangerous and lengthiest conflict in our world?
Levy's criticism of the US and Israel in the rest of his article is even harsher. [Via The Washington Note]
While Secretary Rice visits Israel and "US friendly" Arab governments (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan) often, she has not yet visited Damascus, as far as I know. The Bush administration does not even have an ambassador in Syria, because he was recalled in February 2005 in the wake of the Hariri assassination, according to the State Department.
Jim Lobe writes for the Inter Press Service News Agency about the Bush administration's refusal to talk to Damascus and about former Secretary of State James Baker, who stresses that he believes in talking to enemies:
Washington, even despite quiet requests by Israel during its war with Hezbollah last summer, has refused to talk with Syria since Damascus was implicated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
It spurned an unprecedented 2003 offer by Iran for sweeping and unconditional negotiations and repeatedly rebuffed various approaches by Tehran since. And it has rejected all contacts with the democratically elected Hamas government in the Palestinian territories.
Contrast that attitude with Baker's who, in a much-quoted ABC News interview last Sunday, declared flatly, "...I believe in talking to your enemies. I don't think you restrict your conversations to your friends... (I)n my view, it's not appeasement to talk to your enemies."
Lest anyone misunderstood, he went on to note that he made 15 trips to Damascus to secure its participation in the U.S.-led Gulf War and in subsequent negotiations in 1991, despite the fact that Syria was on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism at the time.
As co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, "Baker met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem in New York City on Sep. 20 and with a 'high representative' of the Iranian government within the last two weeks, according to his Houston law office which declined to provide further details." according to the same article.
Secretary Rice failed again to meet with the Syrian government, writes veteran Middle East correspondent John K. Cooley in the Christian Science Monitor:
Nearly unnoticed amid the justified global furor over North Korea's nuclear test is that Syria has been flashing peace signals at Israel and the United States. It is unwise to ignore them.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seemed to be doing just this, however, when she failed on a recent trip in the region to visit Damascus, often a crucial stop on past American emissaries' Middle East peace tours.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a BBC interviewer last week that Syria was prepared to return to the peace table with Israel, insisting that he needed an "impartial" umpire, perhaps from the European Union (EU). But he said the Bush administration couldn't play this role, because the US doesn't have "the will or vision" to pursue peace in the Middle East, nor is there concrete US-Syria dialogue.
Related posts in the Atlantic Review: Germany wants to woo Syria away from Iran and Hezbollah
Democracy Promotion:
• Richard Youngs appears to be a bit soft on US and a bit too harsh on EU policies in his short paper Europe's flawed approach to Arab democracy (pdf) [Via Kosmoblog].
• Arab and Muslim intellectuals and activists wrote an open letter in the Washington Post "to call on America and its president to reaffirm -- in words and actions -- its commitment to sustained democratic reform in the Arab world":
We know that some in the United States, worried by recent Islamist gains among voters in Palestine and Egypt, are having doubts about the wisdom of pushing for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. These worries are exploited by despots in the region to perpetuate the untenable status quo. But there is no way to advance liberty without inclusion of all elements that are willing to abide by democratic rules and reject violence.
• Carnegie presents an interesting summary of its recent panel discussion "After a Bloody Summer: What’s New in the Middle East?" One of the panelists was Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the leading Middle East advisor to the German government.
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