[NYTr] Embarrassing about-face for US: It withdraws UN Annapolis-inspired Resoln on Israeli Objection!

Fri Nov 30 15:09:30 EST 2007

=[So Annapolis is already an officially, international bad joke. -NYTr]

AP via Yahoo - Nov 30, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_mideast

US withdraws Mideast resolution at UN

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

In an about face, the United States on Friday withdrew a U.N.
resolution endorsing this week's agreement by Israeli and Palestinian
leaders to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008,
apparently after Israel objected.

Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff informed the Security Council that
the United States was pulling the resolution from consideration less
than 24 hours after Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had introduced it and
welcomed the "very positive" response from council members.

Khalilzad had said he needed to consult with the Israelis and
Palestinians overnight on the text of the resolution to ensure it was
what they wanted.

Well-informed diplomats said Israel, a close U.S. ally, did not want a
resolution, which would bring the Security Council into the fledgling
negeotiations with the Palestinians. The diplomats spoke on condition
of anonymity because the discussions were private.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters Friday in the
Tunisian capital, Tunis, that while he didn't know the details of the
draft resolution it was a sign of the seriousness of the United States,
which he also perceived at this week's Mideast conference in Annapolis,
Md.

"This means, if what we have learned is verified, that there are
serious steps that speak to the existence of an American position
supporting the negotiations," Abbas said.

Wolff told reporters the U.S. had held intensive consultations in the
past few days "and the upshot was that there were some unease with the
idea" of a resolution.

"The focus, we all realized again, should be placed and remain on
Annapolis and the understanding that was reached there," Wolff said.
"It's a momentous decision ... and rather than dilute from that and in
respect to both parties in terms of what they thought would be most
helpful, we reached a conclusion that it would be best to withdraw it."

The Annapolis conference drew 44 nations, including Israel's
neighboring Arab states whose support is considered vital to any peace
agreement. A joint understanding between the Israelis and Palestinians,
in doubt until the last minute, was salvaged and Abbas and Olmert
reiterated their desire to reach a peace settlement by the end of next
year.

                              ***

AFP via Yahoo - Nov 30, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071130/pl_afp/mideastdiplomacyunus_071130190358

US withdraws UN text backing Mideast peace process: diplomat

The United States Friday withdrew a resolution it presented to the UN
Security Council endorsing the relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks agreed in Annapolis, a diplomat here said.

The reason for the move was not immediately clear, said the diplomat,
close to the Security Council, and US officials also refused to be
drawn on why the resolution was withdrawn.

The US draft said the council "endorses the program of action for
negotiations and implementation of outstanding obligations ... agreed
upon by the Israeli and Palestinian leadership at Annapolis, Maryland
on November 27, 2007."

On Thursday, after the session at which the draft was submitted, US
ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Security Council members
intended to discuss the text with the parties involved.

His comments appeared to suggest that Israel and the Palestinians had
not been consulted before the text was drafted, as normally happens.
And there were even doubts whether the US State Department had been
informed that the text was to be presented Thursday.

US President George W. Bush brought together Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in the Maryland
state capital on Tuesday in a bid to revive the stagnant Middle East
peace process.

The two sides agreed in Annapolis to relaunch their stalled peace talks
immediately, aiming for a deal including a separate Palestinian state
by late 2008.

The US-proposed draft resolution to the UN Security Council had called
"on all states to lend their diplomatic and political support to
Israeli-Palestinian efforts to implement their agreed program of
action, including by encouraging and recognizing progress and
preventing any support for acts of violence or terrorism intended to
disrupt their efforts."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack would not be drawn on the
reasons behind withdrawing the resolution, saying: "I think the events
and the results of Annapolis speak for themselves.

"You take a look at all the positive effects that came out of Annapolis
and we were not sure that we saw a need to add anything to the
conversation. Sometimes the results of the events speak for themselves."

A senior US government official, who asked not to be named, told
reporters: "I don't think anybody saw the need (for a resolution).

"Inevitably when you get into this process, you have to do a
cost-benefit analysis. Yeah, sure there might be some slight benefit by
passing such a thing.

"But whenever you open these sorts of things up, you open it up to just
turning into a Christmas tree for whatever it is you want to add there."

The UN draft resolution also called "on those states and international
organizations in a position to do so to assist in the development of
the Palestinian economy, including at an upcoming donors' conference in
Paris."

                                 ***

The Washington Post - Nov 29, 2007

Annapolis Talks Prompt Much Doubt, a Few Jokes, in Mideast

By Scott Wilson and Ellen Knickmeyer

JERUSALEM, Nov. 28 -- A day after their leaders announced a new push
for peace, Israelis and Palestinians returned Wednesday to a familiar
and deadly routine, deeply skeptical over the timetable set for the
talks and whether an end to the conflict is achievable at all in the
current political climate.

In cafes and blogs in the Arab world, the Annapolis conference prompted
little more than wisecracks. Commentators made much of a linguistic
coincidence: In Arabic, "ana polis" means "I am the police."

President Bush's message, former Lebanese cabinet minister Essam Norman
wrote in that country's opposition Al-Akhbar newspaper, was: "I am the
policeman of the Middle East, responsible for your safety and security.
Beware devious troublemaking. Israel isn't the enemy, Iran is."

The United States had succeeded only in "dragging the Arabs to a
diplomatic talkfest," Norman wrote.

While newspapers in Israel and the Palestinian territories carried
extensive coverage of the Annapolis conference -- some hopeful, much of
it doubtful -- there were few indications on the ground that what
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called a "historic"
moment in the six-decade conflict had taken place.

The talks, officially inaugurated Wednesday in a White House meeting,
represent the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace process in nearly
seven years. But the failed legacy of other peace efforts named for
their venues -- Madrid, Oslo and Camp David -- and the
still-unfulfilled promise of a U.S.-backed "road map" toward a
Palestinian state made the pledge of peace by the end of next year seem
like wishful thinking to some observers.

"The event in Annapolis was a nonevent," said Ali Jarbawi, a political
science professor at Bir Zeit University near the West Bank city of
Ramallah. "There was nothing there -- three speeches and that's it. For
people here, the reaction is simple. We'll believe it when we see it."

Demonstrators crowded again in front of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert's residence in Jerusalem. But unlike protesters of recent days,
who were worried that Olmert might give up land in the West Bank to
make way for a Palestinian state, the few who assembled there Wednesday
morning were angry over low teachers' salaries. ad_icon

The rain of rockets from the Gaza Strip intensified, as armed
Palestinian groups opposed to talks with the Jewish state had promised
the day before. Israeli military officials said at least 16 rockets and
mortar shells were fired Wednesday into southern Israel, one of them
damaging a building in a farming community in the western Negev desert.

The Israeli air force retaliated by firing on what officials described
as a military post manned by gunmen from Hamas. The airstrike near the
central Gaza city of Khan Younis killed two Hamas gunmen and wounded
five others, Palestinian health officials said.

Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist and has labeled Abbas a
"collaborator" with the Israeli occupation for attending the Annapolis
meeting. The radical Islamic group, which favors armed attacks over
negotiations to force Israel to concede land, release thousands of
Palestinian prisoners and give rights to refugees, was not invited.

Even some officials in Olmert's cabinet questioned the feasibility of
arranging peace in one year given the chaotic state of the Palestinian
electorate.

Speaking to Israeli border police recruits at a military base, Avi
Dichter, a leader of Olmert's Kadima party and public security
minister, said he did not believe Palestinian security forces could
dismantle armed Palestinian groups at war with Israel on the timeline
set at Annapolis.

Doing so is a central element of the 2003 "road map," to which each
side recommitted itself at the conference. Dichter suggested that the
end of next year may be just the start. 

"I believe that by the end of 2008 we'll have a better idea regarding
their performance," Dichter said to reporters at the base. "This could
lead to a very positive, significant process."

Commentary in the Arab world was less optimistic. Egypt and other
countries that the United States considers moderate went to the talks
only because the Bush administration "ordered" them to, said Emad Gad,
an analyst with Egypt's al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic
Studies.

"The Arab regimes exported skepticism to their people as
self-defense . . . to preempt any popular reaction," Gad said. "Leaders
knew Annapolis will not score big goals."

The participation of Saudi leaders, sitting for the first time with
Israel in peace talks, was seen as a coup for the Bush administration.
Not too much should be made of that, pro-government newspaper editor
Jamal Khashoggi wrote in Wednesday's Al-Watan newspaper.

The Saudi kingdom "will have the courage to announce its relinquishing
of the Annapolis conference if it decides it is opposed to it, just as
it had the courage to attend a conference whose terms the Americans
barely managed to define at the last moment," he wrote.

In Iraq, whose government was invited to Annapolis but declined to
attend, officials said they were concentrating on Iraq's own problems.
"We have a lot to do in Iraq rather than get involved in regional or
international issues," said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a top adviser to Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government did not stay
away out of solidarity with Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
on Wednesday renewed predictions of Israel's demise. Even the most
"politically doltish individuals" would realize that the talks were "a
failure from the beginning," Iran's state news agency quoted
Ahmadinejad as saying.

Dabbagh noted that Maliki this week signed a major agreement with Bush
that would possibly prolong the U.S. presence in Iraq. "If we wanted to
follow the footprints of Iran, we would have not have signed any joint
declaration with the United States," Dabbagh said. "We have our
independent views. This has nothing to do with Iran."

Dabbagh said the Iraqi government "will welcome any agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians." His comments reflected a change in tone
from the government of Saddam Hussein, who was one of Israel's
staunchest opponents in the Arab world and supported Palestinian armed
struggle against Israel.

Today, Iraq and Israel share the United States as a key ally while many
of Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors are wary of its Shiite-led government
and its friendliness with Iran.

"There is a sort of anger among the Palestinians," Dabbagh said. "They
supported Saddam, and some still support Saddam."

But Dabbagh added: "We support the current government of Mahmoud Abbas."

[Knickmeyer reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Correspondent
Sudarsan Raghavan and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and
special correspondent Nora Younis in Cairo contributed to this report. ]