Bush calls for conference on Mideast
US president George Bush has called for an international Mideast peace conference to include Israel and once-hostile Arab states
Except at the United Nations, Israel rarely sits down for formal talks with Arab countries that do not recognise it diplomatically. President Bush is trying to change that.
At the conference, to be held later this year at a yet-to-be-disclosed venue, the Israelis, Palestinians and some of their Arab neighbours would thrash out issues that stand in the way of restarting peace talks and establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Bush administration officials are fairly sure they have some takers among the majority of Arab nations that still do not recognise Israel: The idea, after all, was first floated in a now-dormant peace proposal advanced several years ago by then-crown prince and now King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Bush said the conference, open to countries in the region that support a two-state solution to the long Israeli-Palestinian stand-off, would be headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“This is a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice,” Mr Bush said in a speech intended to signal a new resolve on the part of his administration to help restart the stalled peace process.
“We wouldn’t be launching ourselves on this enterprise if we didn’t feel some confidence that there is a willingness in the region to embrace the path to peace,” said Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the State Department’s top diplomat for the Middle East. “We believe that this is a moment for everybody to push the ’go’ button and try and make this work.”
Welch noted that just such a conference was specified in the Saudi-sponsored Arab peace plan, which gained some renewed attention this year. “That’s at the heart of the Arab initiative, and we take them at their word,” he said.
Bush also pledged more US financial support for the moderate Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas and recommended that a group of “donor” countries meet to come up with additional international financial aid. The donor group includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
In an appeal directed at the divided Palestinian people, Bush drew a contrast between what he said life would be like under an Abbas government and under the Islamic militant group Hamas, which gained authority over Gaza in June. Abbas now controls only the West Bank.
“Iraq is not the only pivotal matter in the Middle East,” Mr Bush said.
He said that many changes had come, “some hopeful, some dispiriting,” in the more than five years since he became the first US president to voice full, open support for a separate, independent Palestine alongside Israel.
He said Mr Abbas and his new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, “are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy” while Hamas “has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is devoted to extremism and murder”.
Only the Palestinians can decide which of these two paths to follow, Mr Bush said.
