Rice is studying previous Mid-East peace efforts
According to a story out of Washington from the Associated Press’ Matthew Lee today, “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is looking to the past for lessons on how to make next month’s Mideast peace conference a success”.
Very good.
A few days ago, Rice said something that should have made our ears perk up, in testimony to U.S. Congressmen at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee [See the post "Rice tells US Congress — ???" on our sister log, UN-Truth, here.]
What Rice said was: “For more than six decades, over the course of many administrations, American leaders of both parties have worked for peace and security in the region, not always perfectly, but consistently”.
Not always perfectly???
Today’s story, it is apparent, emerged from Friday’s daily briefing at the U.S. State Department by spokesman Sean McCormack — and from a journalist’s question, probably from the AP writer Matthew Lee, about why Rice spoke with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, an appointment that would have been listed on her daily schedule, or mentioned around the State Department press office.
The full unvarnished excerpt of the exchange at yesterday’s State Department briefing is reproduced here — it shows, at least, that this is one story that was not spoon-fed to the press:
“QUESTION: The Secretary this week also apparently met with President Carter.
MR. MCCORMACK: She did.
QUESTION: What can you tell us about that meeting?
MR. MCCORMACK: Again, I wasn’t in on that one. And they had a fairly good discussion about a variety of different issues. They talked about our efforts in the Middle East. It was a good cordial meeting. She was talking to President Carter about what we were doing.
QUESTION: Compared to what he did?
MR. MCCORMACK: No. This isn’t a game of one-upsmanship.
QUESTION: No, no, no, no. That’s not what I meant. I mean, was she asking him about, you know, as Annapolis approaches, you know, was she looking to him for some kind — I mean, information, inside view of what happened in the run-up to his Camp David talks and –
MR. MCCORMACK: I’m not sure — I’m not sure that was the purpose of this meeting, although she has been actually looking back at the historical record of various efforts to bring together leaders of the Israeli side and the Palestinian side to try to move forward the peace process. She’s talked to over the past several months a number of different individuals that have been involved in those processes, most recently President Clinton’s efforts up at Camp David and then the follow-on efforts that the Israelis and Palestinians and the Egyptians engaged in at Taba. So she has been looking at the historical record, not only the written record but also reaching out to individuals to talk to them about their experiences with these kinds of efforts.
QUESTION: Has she talked to President Clinton or with Secretary Albright?
MR. MCCORMACK: She has spoken with President Clinton. She sees former Secretary Albright on a fairly regular basis. They have a relationship that goes back a number of years to when Secretary Albright’s father was Secretary Rice’s professor at the University of Denver.
QUESTION: And when her conversations with those two have been about the Middle East and about the –
MR. MCCORMACK: With President Carter it’s Middle East as well as other issues [n.b., Carter has recently been in the Sudan].
QUESTION: No, I’m talking about Clinton and Albright.
MR. MCCORMACK: Clinton it is Middle East as well as other issues.
QUESTION: Can you give us a rough timeframe of those? And they’re meeting in person or are there phone calls?
MR. MCCORMACK: No, with President Clinton it was a phone call recently. It was the past several weeks. I can’t remember exactly when, Matt.
QUESTION: And Carter was Wednesday is that correct?
MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.
QUESTION: If it wasn’t specifically about the Middle East, was it — did it have to do with some of — the former President’s recent disparaging comments about the Administration and its foreign policy?
MR. MCCORMACK: No, no, no.
QUESTION: So what was — if it wasn’t the Middle East or that what –
MR. MCCORMACK: I’m going — I’ve told you about the meetings. I’ve generally described them. I think that’s where I’m going to draw the line. I’m not going to get into it much more out of courtesy to the former presidents. If they want to speak more about, obviously they will.
QUESTION: Would you like to –
QUESTION: Can you give us more details on the people she met with or she called and –because you spoke about Clinton, about Madeleine Albright? Is — are there others?
MR. MCCORMACK: I’ll see what I can share with you. A number of other — a number of other folks, I’m sure that you’ve recognized their names. She does — she does regular — regular meetings and outreach with people that she has worked with over the years. You all know that the foreign policy-making circles are –
QUESTION: A revolving door?
MR. MCCORMACK: No, I wouldn’t say it’s a revolving door, but those people who have served at the highest levels, I think, have an appreciation for the jobs that current — current and former officials have done and they talk to each other on a regular basis.
QUESTION: But Sean, you’re not saying that in the lead-up to Annapolis, that she’s seeking the counsel of others who have –
MR. MCCORMACK: No, she does.
QUESTION: But I mean –
MR. MCCORMACK: That’s what I’m trying to get at here, is she’s trying to draw on the historical record and the experiences of others to see what she can glean and how that may be applicable to the current day. We view the situation as some — qualitatively different than it has been. History moves on, people change roles, situations change. That said, you can take the lessons of history and apply them. She is a student of history and has a keen appreciation for how we can apply the lessons of history, what we can learn from those who have gone before us.
QUESTION: And where her consultation of the historical record is –
MR. MCCORMACK: Right.
QUESTION: — concerned, can you tell us what she has found most surprising or revealing or helpful or applicable from the — her consultation of the old documents? [n.b. - whether or not these documents are old, and whether or not some in the State Department, including members of the press corps, might regard them as "ancient history", these old documents and what they've caused are still affecting the lives of literally millions of Palestinians, Israelis, and others...]
MR. MCCORMACK: I’ll let her speak to that. Maybe you can — you guys will, at some point, get a chance to ask her that question, so I’ll let her speak to it”.
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Matthew Lee reported for the AP that “As she prepares to host the international meeting in Annapolis, Md., Rice has delved into the history of U.S. attempts to mediate peace in the region, plunging into the diplomatic annals and seeking out the major players responsible for both successes and failures. ‘She’s trying to draw on the historical record and the experiences of others to see what she can glean and how that may be applicable to the current day’, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday, ahead of Rice’s Nov. 4-6 trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, her second in three weeks to organize the Annapolis gathering.
Most recently, she met this week with Jimmy Carter, sitting down in her office on Wednesday for a talk with the former president who brokered the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, the first between the Jewish state and an Arab nation. Carter has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s Middle East polices and wrote a recent book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid‘, that some believe is anti-Israeli. McCormack said the differences in approach were not a subject of her conversation. Rice has also spoken by phone with former President Clinton about his work on the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace deal. She discussed with both Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright the unsuccessful 2000 attempt in Shepherdstown, W.Va., to mediate an Israeli-Syrian agreement and their bid later that year at Camp David to forge an Israeli-Palestinian pact. Others she has reached out to include former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker, and to one-time U.S. peace negotiators like Dennis Ross, who played a key role in the Clinton administration and the administration of former President George H.W. Bush.
In addition, Rice, whose background is in Soviet studies, asked the State Department historian’s office to prepare a voluminous, and classified, compendium of its records on the U.S. role in Middle East peacemaking …”
The AP report added that “Rice faces serious obstacles in organizing Annapolis, with both Israel and the Palestinians far apart on a joint statement to be presented to the meeting that she and President Bush hope will launch the start of formal peace talks. The two sides have fundamental differences over how detailed the document must be and whether it should contain a timeline for progress in the eventual negotiations. The Israelis want the statement to be as vague as possible while the Palestinians are pushing for deadlines and specific references to the key issues in the conflict, among them the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Rice’s last trip to the region, a furious four-day shuttle diplomacy mission earlier this month, produced little apparent progress on bringing the two sides together.
However, she did win at least public support for the Annapolis conference from Egypt and Jordan, two critical Arab allies of the United States that had both expressed skepticism about the utility of the meeting”.
The AP report on Rice studying the history of previous Middle East peace efforts is posted here.
Tags: Condoleeza Rice, Israel, negotiations history, Palestinians, the Middle East Peace process