Administration Official Assures Middle East the "Crusades Are Over"

By Gene Bird

"The Cold War is not being replaced with a new competition between Islam and the West. It is evident that the Crusades have been over for a long time."

So said Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and South Asian Affairs Edward Djerejian upon his return from the Lisbon meeting of the multilateral steering group for the Mideast peace talks at the end of May. One of his first acts was to deliver two strong messages to an audience of foreign affairs specialists at Meridian House in Washington, DC on June 2.

The first message was that the peace talks will continue right through the U.S. elections, with the administration pressing both the bilateral talks between Israel and the joint Palestinian/Jordanian delegation, Syria and Lebanon, and the five multilateral talks on water resources, refugees, the environment, economic development, and arms control and security. President George Bush hopes to meet his administration's original goal of having an interim self-governing "administration" or "authority" in place in the occupied territories by late this year.

Islam: No New Cold War

Djerejian's second message is that the administration strongly rejects the growing campaign in the media (mostly fueled by pro-Israel writers) tagging Islam as the new menace to Western democracy, replacing the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

"If there is one thought I can leave with you tonight," the assistant secretary said, "It is that the United States government does not view Islam as the next 'ism' confronting the West or threatening world peace. That is an over-simplistic response to a complex reality." He added that Washington did not detect any monolithic or coordinated international effort behind movements seeking to restructure governments or Arab societies in keeping with Islamic ideals. Religion is not a determinant. "Our quarrel is with extremism," he added.

Afterwards, he was heard to ask a retired ambassador, "Did that message about Islam come through?" It was apparently the principal point he wanted to get across. He was told it came through loud and clear.

He might have added a third principal for the administration: Don't make us rock the boat by insisting on answers to such questions as: Where are the "confidence building" measures by Israel and the Palestinians which the Americans and others have called for during the process? And, particularly, do not ask about Resolution 194, specifying the right of return or compensation for the Palestinian refugees. There is a total ban in the State Department on speculating about such sensitive topics.

Washington in the "Early Fall"

At Lisbon, the steering group for the multilateral Middle East talks agreed on new venues for the individual subjects: Discussions in "the early fall" on water will take place in Washington; refugees will re-convene in Ottawa, environment will move to The Hague from Tokyo at the last round; economic development will be held in Paris; and arms control and regional security talks will move to Moscow from Washington. Why the movable feast approach? Probably because the administration wants to involve and keep involved as many different international players as possible, placing pressures on the Middle East parties, Arabs and Israelis, to join these multilateral talks as well as the bilaterals.

The fact that Syria (and Lebanon) have refused to join the multilateral talks until progress is made in the bilaterals fazes the administration very little so far. The U.S. feeling is that the momentum is going to build as real prospects for beneficial economic and political results are foreseen by the parties.

The administration claims that the "seriousness of the steering group proceedings" in Lisbon indicates the importance all parties attach to these multilateral discussions.

Not quite. The Israelis had refused to attend two of the multilateral working group meetings on refugees and economic issues because "diaspora" Palestinians from outside the occupied territories were there. And the Syrians refused to attend any multilateral talks, pending an agreement on Israel's withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

But there were some substantive issues addressed at those second-round meetings. (The first round in Moscow was largely ceremonial.) Twelve of the 21 members of the Arab League were present in Washington for talks on arms and security, besides impressive participation by all of the major arms suppliers to the area, including the Chinese. Turkish and Indian (but not Pakistani) delegates were present for the critical talks on security, often cited by Israel as the grounds for its refusal to give up the territory it occupied 25 years ago.

A Palestinian delegate traveled to Washington, uninvited, to try to attend the arms control and regional security talks. He did not attend but was able to make the case to the press that the Palestinians deserved to be there, on security grounds alone.

Golan is Ultimate Issue With Syria

The direct confrontation in the talks with Syria, expected after the Israeli elections, will be over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Both Yitzhaks, Shamir and Rabin, during the run-up to the Israeli election, vowed never to give up an inch of the territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967, not even in return for a full peace. Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, on the other hand, told the Egyptians on June 1 that Israel could have a full peace treaty with Syria, lifting of the boycott, establishment of full diplomatic relations, and the opening of the Israel-Syrian border to people and goods in return for Israeli withdrawal from all of the Golan Heights. He added that the only Syrian condition was that settlement of the Palestinian issue would have to come first.

The Bush administration strategy is to hold off this confrontation by keeping all parties engaged in as many of the talks as possible, until their peoples are psychologically prepared to make needed concessions. The strategy of both major parties in Israel is to fend off having to make those concessions for as long as possible, without losing U.S. economic and military aid.

Carrots or Something Stronger?

The question is, will any perceived economic and security benefits from the complex regional talks alone or the potential results of the combined bilateral and multilateral negotiations be enough to persuade the parties to make concessions without the U.S. and Russia (and, perhaps, the EEC and U.N.) imposing some other means of persuasion? Will the carrots from the face-to-face talks, in the midst of what is still a shooting war, be enough? The shared responsibility concept behind the peace talks, unlike Camp David, is a unique experiment in the new era of "Preventive Diplomacy" and "Coalition Foreign Policy." Regardless of how seriously the Middle Eastern parties take all this, there seems little doubt the administration is very serious indeed.

Eugene Bird, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.