Mideast conference nears, with few plans
A few days after Thanksgiving, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plan to open a meeting in Annapolis to launch the first round of substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during Bush’s presidency.
But no conference date has been set. No invitations have been issued. And no one really agrees on what the participants will actually talk about once they arrive at the Naval Academy for the meeting, which is intended to relaunch Bush’s stillborn “road map” plan to create a Palestinian state.
The anticipation surrounding the meeting has heightened the stakes for other countries seeking invites. If Turkey comes, Greece wants a seat. So does Brazil, which has more Arabs than the Palestinian territories. Norway hosted an earlier round of peacemaking in Oslo, so it wants a role. Japan wants to do more than write checks for Palestinians.
“No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.”
The envoy recounted the calls he made in recent days to dig up information and said he had reserved rooms for his country’s foreign minister and other officials. He added with exasperation: “It is a very peculiar thing.”
Even a senior administration official deeply involved in the preparations confided, before speaking off the record about his expectations: “I can’t connect the dots myself because it is still a work in progress.” [complete article]
