US-Palestinian relations back on track
AFP
Date: 05-26-05
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Presidents George W. Bush and Mahmud Abbas put US-Palestinian relations back on track after years of strain, but analysts said their talks had more symbolic value than substance.
The simple fact the two men could hold a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden sent a powerful message after Bush's staunch refusal to see Abbas' late predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Abbas' first visit to Washington as Palestinian leader restored a measure of balance to US Middle East diplomacy which critics feared was tilting towards Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a frequent guest here.
"The results of the meeting lived up to our highest expectations," Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP afterward.
Palestinian officials compared the reception to the days of president Bill Clinton when Arafat was a welcomed guest before becoming a pariah in the Bush administration for failing to stem anti-Israel attacks.
But the Israelis played down the encounter Thursday. A senior official in Jerusalem, who asked not to be named, said Bush's support for a Palestinian state and the peace roadmap were "neither new nor surprising."
Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert with the United States Institute of Peace here, said that if the summit was short on concrete developments, it was steeped in symbolic significance.
"The way they conducted themselves in the Rose Garden signalled to the whole world that American-Palestinian relations are back to normal," Lasensky told AFP.
Abbas left with "a modest boost," he said. "It wasn't a major breakthrough, but people forget Palestinian-American relations had almost collapsed in the last four to five years."
"This visit has now finalized a six- to seven-month process of normalizing American-Palestinian relations" begun after the death of Arafat last November, Lasensky said.
Steven Cook, of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), said, "I don't think Abbas got everything that he wanted but I think he certainly got a good deal."
Among the more significant gestures, he said, was the direct grant of 50 million dollars in US aid from an administration that has channeled most of its help through third parties because of the Palestinians' reputation as corrupt.
If the move highlighted a new sense of US trust in the Palestinians, the 50 million dollars for housing and infrastructure development in Gaza came out of funds previously approved by Congress.
Bush spoke the words Abbas wanted to hear when he called on Israel to live up to its roadmap obligations, including a halt to the expansion of settlements on Palestinian territory.
But analysts said the US president did not want to come down too hard on Sharon less than three months before the planned start of the landmark withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
"The administration wants to be able to support Sharon in the disengagement as much as possible," Cook said. "It probably would not be good timing to really take the Israelis to task with Abbas next to them."
Nor was there any indication whether the Americans heard Abbas' plea to consider the Gaza pullout only a first step and follow it up with immediate resumption of discussions on so-called final status issues.
If the Palestinians claimed success in Thursday's summit, they did not come away with a US letter of engagement from Bush that Abbas was reportedly seeking to balance a written text given to Sharon last year.
Bush also kept up the pressure on Abbas to make democratic reforms within the Palestinian government, revamp his security forces and pursue efforts to rein in violence by militants.
"Only the defeat of violence will lead to sovereignty," Bush said.
Source
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
|