John P. Richardson

When looking back over his career, John P. Richardson thinks of himself as a kind of "Johnny - One- Note." He has been playing the same tune, he says, while holding down jobs as diverse as Program Director for the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME); President of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA); Director of Public Affairs for the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA); and President of the Center for U.S.-European Middle East Cooperation, which is the position he now has. And just what is the name of that tune? "You could call it 'trying to further the U.S. national interest,'" says Mr. Richardson. "In all the institutions I've been part of, their major thrust has been to contribute, even though very modestly, to the search for a just solution of the Arab-Israeli dispute. But whether this has involved giving assistance to needy Palestinian refugees or trying to help people learn about both sides of the argument, the principal motivation for doing those things has always been that they were in the interests not just of the people in the region but of the United States itself."

Getting Involved

Mr. Richardson, who is now 43, first got hooked on the Middle East while working towards a postgraduate degree in government at Georgetown University, after having graduated with honors in English from Williams College. "I did some projects connected with the area," he says, "and soon realized that what I had thought I knew about the Middle East did not square with what was happening on the ground. I also discovered that the U.S. was a lot more involved in the Middle East than I had realized. It seemed to me there ought to be a lot more people working in that area."

Taking his own advice, Mr. Richardson joined AFME after getting his M.A., then served for three years as program director in Washington and two years in Beirut as its representative for Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. When ANERA got started in 1968, he went aboard as executive director and became president five years later. In 1977, NAAA asked him to fill the newly-created post of Director of Public Affairs, and for the next four years he spent much of his time on Capitol Hill, lobbying Congressmen on issues important to Arab Americans. Mr. Richardson puts it another way: "For four years, I banged my head against the wall."

Many other people, however, point to a solid record of accomplishment, including his playing a key role in 1978 in persuading Congress to sell F-15 jets to Saudi Arabia.

In any case, after four years of often frustrating service in the front-lines of Capitol Hill, Mr. Richardson says he decided that the time had come to begin playing his tune somewhere else. So in 1981 he founded the Center for U.S.-European Middle East Cooperation, which is funded mainly by a private European foundation involved in Middle East questions. The basic goal of the Center is to make better known in the U.S. the European views on what should be done to bring peace to the Middle East.

Different European Perspective

It had always seemed to me that in Europe, the climate for free and objective debate on Middle East issues was a more receptive one than in this country," Mr. Richardson says. "As a result, many worthwhile suggestions surface there which give Europeans a completely different perspective on an area where they have a common interest with Americans. I thought it would be a good idea to give American decision-makers and legislators as much opportunity as possible to listen to what highly respected and distinguished Europeans have to say on this subject." In general, Europeans tend to favor measures guaranteeing Israel's security, but place far more stress than is usually heard in the U.S. on the equal need for Palestinians, as well as the Israelis, to be allowed to exercise self -determination—if there is to be a permanent peace.

In pursuit of this objective, the Center carries out a number of activities. For example, it arranges visits of European parliamentarians to the U.S.; has sponsored a series of Washington, D.C. luncheons at each of which a Middle East specialist from a European Community embassy presents his views to a gathering of Congressional aides; and has co-sponsored a Washington, D.C. seminar to discuss U.S. and European perspectives on Middle East problems. Its biggest single project has been the co-sponsorship, along with the Paris-based Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, of a three-day conference last November in Ditchley Park, near Oxford, England, in which parliamentarians from six European countries exchanged views with U.S. Congressmen and former Congressmen. Mr. Richardson said it was so successful that there are plans to hold another such meeting in the U.S. But drawing on his previous experience as a lobbyist, he notes cannily that it would have to be after the November elections, "because from this summer onwards you won't be able to get a Congressman to show up at a meeting that is outside his district."