Put Jimmy Carter in Charge of a UN Peace Commission

By Gene Bird

The question on the lips of every former diplomat in Washington is, what kind of diplomacy still has a possibility of working in the Gulf crisis?

One possible answer came from area experts at the annual Middle East Institute conference in Washington early in October: why not drop our past resistance to a truly comprehensive approach to Middle East peace? Why not lead our newfound coalition in establishing a United Nations Commission on Peace in the Middle East, headed by former President Jimmy Carter, with a mandate to deal with and solve as many as possible of the long-standing and dangerous disputes in the area that threaten the consensus in a post-Cold War world? Let it deal not only with the Gulf problem and the aggression by the Iraqi dictator, but eventually use the international coalition to work out a realistic peace in Lebanon and between Israel and the Palestinians before the year 2000? At the Middle East conference of several hundred experts it seemed to be the only clear non-war scenario.

Jimmy Carter is still the only Western leader with a proven personal track record in the art of patient and successful negotiation of the irreconcilables in the Middle East. He seems to be effective with Muslim, Jew and Arab Christian. It is fair to say that he alone personally achieved the only more or less permanent breakthrough in the Middle East in the last 40 years.

If Menachem Begin and his successors had carried out their promises made to Carter at Camp David, and negotiated in good faith with the Palestinians, the Middle East today would be a different kind of place. The following scenario, some of the experts at the Institute conference suggested, might just work: First, create a permanent United Nations Commission on Peace in the Middle East to use as an umbrella for the presence of a multinational force there, with clear mandates to work on and solve the problems of clashing nationalisms over a period of years. This would be anathema to Yitzhak Shamir and his ilk in the government of Israel. So, however, is every US initiative toward implementing a land-for-peace settlement.

By now responsible American Jewish leaders know that a Greater Israel is no solution, and they acknowledge that Shamir has proven less than a totally reliable collaborator in our quest for peace.

Second, President Bush must give a powerful and practical vision of policy for the world organization to adopt: the principle of one person, one vote eventually for the citizens of all states in the region; and the right of every state to live free of threats from inside or outside the area. The justification for inserting the United Nations and American power into negotiations to settle the major disputes, Arab-Jewish and Arab-Arab? The parties on their own will never reach peace.

Third, pledge some of our key military units to a combined UN force prepared to remain for 10 years in parts of the Middle East where the sovereign power wants them to remain, to safeguard the peace and support democratic self-determination for all who reside there. Perhaps in the largely uninhabited and centrally located Sinai, perhaps elsewhere, or even in several places.

The parties on their own will never reach peace.

The Middle East has proven to be too important to leave to xenophobic religious nationalists, whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian extremists.

No one can be sure if such an initiative at this late date would prevent combat in the Gulf. Even if it did not, however, Carter and a permanent and credible UN Peace Commission would be there to help pick up the post-war pieces. Above all, it would reduce our own American profile and maintain world involvement, while protecting everyone's basic interests: access by the entire world to the petroleum on a fully commercial basis; a regional trend to democracy; participation by the people of the area in determining their own destiny; and, above all, security for both Arab and Jew without further threats to international order.

Can a Republican president seek the services of a Democratic predecessor? I hope so. It would demonstrate the flexibility demanded of a truly great power seeking a better formula for the new world order, and pointing the way towards settlement of these and future dangerous regional disputes.

Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer with service in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, was co-chair in Oregon of the 1976 Carter for President committee. He is now president of Foreign Affairs Assistance Corps, a group working on democratization and privatization of former state economies.