hypocritexposer
Well-known member
September 18, 2009
President Obama blow as US fails to secure Israel peace talks progress
A frantic effort by the US Middle East envoy to wrest an agreement that would restart peace talks appeared to have ended in failure yesterday, inflicting President Obama’s first important foreign policy setback.
George Mitchell shuttled between Jerusalem and the West Bank attempting to wrest an agreement on settlement building before the UN General Assembly meeting next week.
US officials had hoped that Israeli and Palestinian leaders would meet on the sidelines of the assembly, kick-starting peace negotiations that have been stalled for nearly nine months. But a spokesperson for the State Department told reporters, “There has been no agreement to have the trilateral meeting . Of course we were hoping for a breakthrough.”
It appeared that Israeli and Palestinian leaders remained at odds over several key issues, most notably Israel’s West Bank settlements. Mr Mitchell was said to be pushing Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, for a year-long freeze but an Israeli official said that this “was not an option”.
It would consider a freeze of up to nine months, the official said, excluding approximately 3,000 housing units that had already been approved. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, told Mr Mitchell yesterday that he would not resume talks without a complete freeze, according to the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “We once again reiterated that there is no middle ground solutions for settlements. A settlement freeze is a settlement freeze.”
The White House put an optimistic gloss on Mr Mitchell’s efforts. Asked about a nine-month freeze, Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s spokesman, said that it could be “very helpful to the overall process”.
Despite the evidence of faltering diplomacy, Mr Gibbs spoke of progress and momentum on which the US hopes to build. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli leadership commented on their attendance at next week’s UN summit, and with the US envoy flying back to Washington — and the Jewish and Muslim holidays lasting through the weekend — time was running out to reach a compromise.
One Palestinian official involved in the talks said: “The Americans thought they would come in here and push us around at the beginning of the week. But they didn’t get what they wanted and now they are the ones left looking embarrassed.”
Mr Netanyahu, speaking to an Israeli news network before the holiday weekend, said of the peace talks: “If it will be, it will be. If not, not. I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t put conditions on the talks.”
The failure to reach a compromise marked a major setback for President Obama, who has made the Middle East peace process a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
Mr Mitchell, who had extended his stay in Israel to broker terms, said that the US shared a “sense of urgency” to restart peace talks. But meetings between him and Mr Netanyahu this week have been frosty; on Wednesday, during a photoshoot, the Israeli leader turned his back on Mr Mitchell after a perfunctory handshake.
Officials on both sides have said that it would be difficult to refuse an invitation from Mr Obama to attend the UN meeting but questioned whether the timing was right to try to restart the peace talks.
Mr Netanyahu, who heads a right-wing coalition, currently sits as the head of one of the most stable governments in recent Israeli history. Aides say that he is unlikely to rock the boat when he feels that the Americans are offering little in return.
“Obama is largely distrusted by the Israeli public and it seems that he can’t deliver anything of great significance,” one official close to the Israeli leader said. “It would not make sense for Bibi to cosy up to the Americans, given the current climate.”
Israel was hoping that Mr Mitchell would secure a number of guarantees, including the normalisation of ties with the Arab world, in exchange for a deal on a settlement freeze.
Kurt Hoyer, a US embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv, said that mediation would continue and that the US must “realise this is a long process”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6840260.ece