- LONDON (Reuters) - President
Bush's Middle East policy speech drew scorn and disappointment, along with
some polite interest, from the Arab world Tuesday.
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- Most Arab governments maintained a stunned silence, but
officials, commentators and ordinary people were scandalized.
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- "It has more holes than Swiss cheese," an Egyptian
official said of Bush's long-awaited speech that commanded the Palestinians
to ditch their leadership if they wanted a state.
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- Bush, in a message read at the White House Tuesday, backed
creation of a provisional Palestinian state and a final settlement of the
Middle East conflict in three years, but only if Palestinians changed their
leader and met other tough terms.
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- "It doesn't set a mechanism on how to implement
the proposals or the ideas that Mr. Bush set forward," the Egyptian
official said, referring to the prospect of a provisional state.
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- The official, who asked not to be named, said Bush had
adopted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's agenda focused on removing
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from power. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan had tried to persuade Bush to set a time scale for Palestinian statehood
and an end to Israel's 35-year-old occupation and settlement of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, in return for full Arab ties with the Jewish state.
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- Syria had no official comment on Bush's demand that it
crack down on groups Israel and the United States call terrorist or risk
being excluded from any Middle East peace talks.
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- But Imad Shueibi, a political science professor at Damascus
University, said he did not expect Syria to sever its ties to militant
Palestinian groups and Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas.
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- "This is a cross-eyed vision," he said of Bush's
speech.
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- He said Washington's fixation on terror would cripple
any bid to end Israeli-Palestinian violence, dismissing Bush's call for
a new Palestinian leadership "not compromised by terror."
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- "This is the intelligence service style of politics,"
Shueibi said. "It seeks a Palestinian coup, and the appointment of
leaders who say 'Yes! Yes sir!"'
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- MISSED OPPORTUNITY
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- Gulf Arab commentators said Bush had missed a chance
to present a balanced peace plan that could attract Arab support, choosing
instead to mirror the views of Sharon's right-wing Likud party and impose
impossible conditions on the Palestinians.
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- "I am very disappointed. Mr. Bush completely adopted
the Likud version of the situation," said Jamal Khashoggi, deputy
editor of Saudi Arabia's English-language daily Arab News.
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- "It was a totally one-sided view of things and it
avoids taking issue with the occupation, which is the source of all problems
in the Middle East," said Abdul-Khaleq Abdulla, a commentator in the
United Arab Emirates.
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- Jordan's mainstream daily ad-Dustour said Bush's speech
was a "disappointment" that would raise tensions in the region.
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- In Beirut, Lebanese commentator Michael Young said Bush's
words were a victory for the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
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- "It is absurd. The Americans have changed their
priority from ending the violence to changing the Palestinian leadership,
which is Sharon's priority," Young said. "One cannot change leadership
by dictate... The United States wants Arafat to end the violence, while
doing everything possible to undermine him."
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- The main Tunisian Arabic-language newspaper Assabah said
Bush had failed to satisfy minimum Palestinian and Arab demands.
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- "Bush and Sharon seek the same goal of ending the
Palestinian intifada and (bringing about) a comprehensive normalization
of relations between Arab states and Israel in return for starting an open-ended
negotiation process which will keep the situation unchanged for years or
perhaps decades," the newspaper wrote in a commentary.
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- OFFICIAL CAUTION
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- Amid the gloom, some Arab voices tried to salvage crumbs
of comfort with words of faint praise for Bush.
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- In Cairo, the semi-official Al-Ahram daily said Egypt
was "studying with great interest" Bush's ideas and would respond
after consulting the Palestinian Authority and Arab states.
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- And Saudi analyst Dawood al-Shirian said Arabs should
seize on "positive elements" in Bush's speech to promote peace.
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- But at street level, Arabs dismissed the U.S. president's
vision as hopelessly biased toward Israel.
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- "I see Bush himself as Sharon, with the same enmity
toward the Palestinian people," a 70-year-old Palestinian, Kamel Faris,
told Reuters in the bustling Baqaa refugee camp near Amman.
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- In Cairo, 23-year-old computer science graduate Omar
Farouk said the United States was abusing its position as the world's sole
superpower. "It was a speech made by a president who is a captive
of the Jewish lobby's will and not his own," he said.
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