- WASHINGTON -- More than 60
former US diplomats yesterday lambasted George Bush for running a one-sided
Middle East policy, claiming that the President's open-ended support for
Israel was costing the US "credibility, prestige and friends".
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- In a public letter to the President, inspired by a similar
protest delivered to Tony Blair last week by 52 former British ambassadors,
the diplomats call on the administration to return to being a "truly
honest broker" in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,
and to "reassert American principles of justice and fairness".
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- "Your unqualified support for Israel's extra-judicial
assassinations, its Berlin Wall-like barrier, and its harsh military measures
in occupied territories" was costing the country its credibility,
the letter said. It warned that current US policies were placing US diplomats,
civilians and military overseas "in an untenable, even dangerous position."
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- As with their British counterparts, the last straw for
the letter's signatories - many of them veterans of Middle East postings
- was the 14 April meeting in Washington when Mr Bush endorsed the plan
of Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, to hang on to five substantial
settlement areas in the West Bank, and flatly rejected the right of return
for Palestinian refugees.
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- Describing what he called "an almost hopeless situation",
Andrew Killgore, a former US envoy to Qatar, complained that Mr Bush had
given his public support to Mr Sharon without talking to the "quartet"
of the US, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, which devised
the so-called "road-map" plan for a settlement.
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- "There was no need to go that far," Mr Killgore,
the prime organiser of the letter, told a press conference yesterday. And
there was "no competition" between the President and Senator
John Kerry, his probable White House challenger in November, he said. "They're
both very dedicated Zionists, it seems to me."
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- The protest, which will seek to attract further signatures
before being formally sent to Mr Bush on 28 May, was made public as foreign
ministers of the quartet met in New York and insisted that all final details
of a peace agreement must be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians.
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- In Europe particularly, there has been strong criticism
of the Sharon plan - one of whose key elements, a full Israeli withdrawal
from Gaza, was rejected at the weekend by Mr Sharon's own Likud party.
Unlike the British diplomats' protest, the American letter contains only
an oblique reference to Iraq. But another signatory, Carleton Coon, a former
US envoy to Nepal, spoke of the "disaster" of the war in Iraq,
which "might not have turned out so badly if we had been seen to support
the rights of the Palestinians as well as of the Israelis".
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- The letter, with its complaint that Mr Bush and Mr Sharon
have consistently excluded the Palestinians from negotiations, is believed
to reflect the views of many serving US diplomats experienced in Middle
East affairs. Even so it is unlikely to achieve much traction inside the
Bush administration, where the State Department's clout is already limited,
and where hardliners at the Pentagon and in the Vice-President's office
usually prevail over Colin Powell, the Secretary of State.
-
- Indeed, Edward Peck, a former senior US diplomat in Baghdad,
said Mr Bush had been "misled" by his closest advisers. By endorsing
Mr Sharon's proposals, he said, the President had effectively "ended
the tripartite arrangement" of negotiations between Israel and the
Palestinians, brokered by the US.
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- Though their numbers are growing, the US signatories
are not as well known as their British counterparts. They must, moreover,
make their voice heard in a country where public support for Israel is
instinctive - and far stronger than in Britain. The Bush administration
may be tempted simply to ignore the letter, arguing that the existing "road-map"
envisages the creation of an independent Palestine, and that the failure
to make progress is the fault of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
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- Nor, in an election year, will either major party will
do anything to upset the potent Israeli lobby. Mr Bush is probably the
most pro-Israeli president in recent times (certainly more so than his
father). But John Kerry, his Democratic challenger-designate this autumn,
is a scarcely less ardent supporter of the Jewish state, promising that
if elected president, he would never push Israel into peace agreements
that were against its interest.
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- EXTRACTS FROM THE US DIPLOMATS' LETTER
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- "You have placed US diplomats, civilians and military
doing their jobs overseas in an untenable and even dangerous position ..."
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- "By closing the door to negotiations with Palestinians
and the possibility of a Palestinian state, you have proved that the United
States is not an even-handed peace partner ..."
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- "Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial
assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures
in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral
plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends ..."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=518227
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