US peace meet buoyed by Arab pledges to send top diplomats
©AFP - Cris Bouroncle
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States was buoyed Friday by pledges from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to send their top diplomats to a conference next week aimed at reviving Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Not only has Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal agreed to join his counterparts from Egypt and Jordan at the talks Tuesday near Washington but Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem signaled chances were high he would go.
"We welcome the decision by the Arab League follow-on committee to attend the Annapolis conference at the ministerial level," State Department spokesman Karl Duckworth told AFP, reading a statement.
"This is a signal that they believe this will be a serious and substantive meeting."
The decision means Saudi Arabia will sit at the same table with the Jewish state for the first time to discuss Middle East peacemaking.
©AFP/File - Behrouz Mehri
The meeting formally kicks off in Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday with US President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Prince Saud said after the Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo that he had been "reluctant" to join the conference but agreed to go so as not to break Arab consensus.
Saudi Arabia has never recognized Israel and no senior figure from it has held public talks with Israeli officials except for meetings at the United Nations and a 1996 international summit on fighting terrorism.
"We are not going for handshakes or a display of emotions ... We are there only to reach a peace which safeguards Arab interests and safeguards the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese lands," Prince Saud said.
Washington is seeking as wide an Arab participation as possible at the meeting, aimed at kickstarting peace talks after seven years of stalemate.
©AFP/File - Mandel Ngan
In launching a new push for Palestinian-Israeli peace, the United States is hoping to enlist the support of moderate Arab states that are also concerned about the rising power of Iran following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Iran backs radical groups throughout the Middle East, including the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which seized power from Palestinian Abbas's secular Fatah faction in the Gaza Strip in June.
High-level Syrian involvement is also key for Washington because Damascus is an ally of Iran that backs radical groups in the Middle East.
Arab states "have accepted the invitation to attend the Annapolis conference on a ministerial level," according to a statement after the Cairo talks.
However, the ministers sent an urgent letter to the United States asking it to "explicitly" include on the agenda the issue of the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
On Friday night, Muallem said Washington had agreed, though a US statement was more circumspect.
©AFP/File - David Furst
"The American administration confirmed inclusion of the Syrian-Israeli issue -- the Golan -- in the Annapolis meeting," Walid Muallem was quoted by the official SANA news agency as saying.
He added that Syria would decide whether it would attend the meeting after receiving an official copy of the agenda.
The US State Department said all parties to the meeting could raise their "national interests" without actually confirming whether the Golan Heights would officially be on the agenda.
Despite the Arab vote of confidence, Abbas said Israel and the Palestinians had failed to agree on a joint document to be presented at the meeting.
Major differences exist between the Israelis and Palestinians, even over what the statement should be called.
The Palestinians want a timeline on efforts to resolve the thorniest issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future state and the fate of refugees.
©AFP - Abbas Momani
Israel instead wants a less detailed document, stating a list of principles on which to base negotiations.
Nonetheless, Abbas urged Arab ministers to seize the "historic opportunity" for peace.
Israel welcomed the Arab decision, with foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev saying: "We hope to see an Arab contribution to this process and it is clear that peace will require significant steps from Israel as well as from the Arab world."
But Hamas urged the Arabs to stay away from the conference, saying they would be normalising ties with Israel "for free" and encouraging Israel to get even tougher with the Palestinians.
Olmert warned that a failure of peace efforts would promote Hamas at the expense of Palestinian moderates who have managed to cling on to the West Bank, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
"Unless a political horizon can be found, the results will be deadly," he said.
On Thursday, Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa said any deal must be based on a Saudi-sponsored Arab blueprint, which offers normalization of ties with the Jewish state if it withdraws from Arab land occupied in 1967.
The US administration had initially wanted to limit the scope of the meeting to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but has decided to broaden discussions to satisfy several Arab countries.
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