Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

President George W. Bush says that he has not abandoned the goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East. “The desire for freedom and justice is the greatest weapon in the fight against violent extremists,” he said.

Mr. Bush traveled to the Middle East to meet with U.S. allies there and to promote negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Mr. Bush said that the trip showed the U.S. commitment to helping Israel and the Palestinians make peace. And he emphasized the need for other nations in the region to support this effort.

In visits to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, Mr. Bush also called attention to the regional threat posed by Iran, and he restated the long-standing U.S. policy of contributing to the security of the Gulf countries.

Where does U.S. policy in the Middle East stand today? Will the Israelis and Palestinians reach an accord? How will the threat from Iran be countered? And is there a prospect for further democratic development in the region? I’ll ask my guests -- David Pollock, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Middle East analyst and former Washington bureau chief for Al-Hayat international newspaper, Salameh Nematt. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

In Jerusalem and then in Ramallah, President Bush addressed skeptics who would say that, in his last year in office, there really isn’t time to make much progress on peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Let’s hear what he had to say:

Bush: "Is it possible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to work out their differences on core issues so that a vision can emerge? And my answer is, absolutely, it’s possible. Not only is it possible -- it’s necessary."

Host: Salameh Nematt, is there a new strategy going on here, a new effort?

Nematt: I think that the President is responding to regional pressure to basically restart the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And he made this effort, in part, to contain concerns that things were going out of control in the Palestinian territories, and that could have a spillover effect on neighboring states, especially on Jordan. I don’t think that the President seriously believes that we will have a final settlement on the core issues, on issues like borders and security, issues like settlements, and the Palestinian state, where they defined borders before the end of the year. But he does believe that maybe both sides are exhausted enough that they might try something new this time, having tried everything else in the past. So I think it’s partly responding to regional concerns, in order to promote a wider agenda in the region, partly to contain the Iranian threat, which is the primary concern.

Host: David Pollock, what’s your sense on that -- just trying to limit the fallout from the violence that’s been going on in the Palestinian territories or really pushing for this goal of some kind of deal?

Pollock: I think it’s somewhere in between, would be my best guess. Of course, we’re all just speculating because, in the Middle East, things tend to be a little unpredictable. But I would say that, to actually implement a full-scale agreement is -- I agree with Salameh -- is not anywhere near likely to happen in the next year. But, perhaps, to reach some kind of agreement, in principle, on the outlines of what could be a final status settlement between Israel and the Palestinians -- that’s not beyond the realm of possibility.

Host: Now, is there any new strategy going on to try to get to a deal?

Pollock: Yeah, I think that, in a certain sense, there is. And that doesn’t mean it’s going to work, but I think there is a new strategy. And it consists, first of all, of the President’s own personal involvement, which is relatively new and still limited, but it’s different. There’s more of it than there has been for the entire term of Bush’s presidency so far, and that does make some difference. And I think that there will be a follow-up in a return visit to the region, which has already been more or less promised for May. So that will help keep some momentum going. And the second important part of it is that both sides have agreed to negotiate final-status issues for the first time, really, since 2000, since the collapse of the Camp David Summit.

Host: And by saying “final status,” this is to say, not just agreeing on methods by which there will be further negotiations, but, rather, to try to negotiate on the actual deal.

Pollock: On the actual issues, right -- I think that’s right, on what they’re calling now the core issues that Salameh mentioned, on Jerusalem and borders and refugees and security issues and so on. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to resolve any of those issues, necessarily, but they have agreed, at least, to start talking about them seriously.

Host: Salameh Nematt, do you think those two issues -- President Bush’s personal involvement and trying to focus on actual final-agreement terms -- are those two developments going to make much difference?

Nematt: I’m not sure if it is a strategy and whether, if it is a strategy, whether it’s going to work. I think that the fact of the matter is, the President is on his way out. The Prime Minister of Israel is pretty weak, and he’s on his way out. The Palestinian Authority has been weakened by the split with Hamas. Fatah itself, the mainstream organization within the Palestinian Authority -- it is also divided. And I can’t see how these players can actually reach an agreement on final-status issues, issues that have eluded resolution over the past two decades, to say the least, since the 1991 Madrid peace conference that launched the peace talks. I think that, perhaps, they could lay the groundwork for a settlement. Maybe they can agree on reference points. Maybe they can have memos of understanding, a memorandum of -- a declaration of sorts that would be followed by detailed negotiation of the issues, on how to implement, et cetera, et cetera. But I cannot really see the current set of leadership, if you like, in the region, with U.S. backing, can actually take these steps. Hard-liners on both sides are determined to undermine any kind of a settlement. And the leaders, as I said -- the Israeli leaders, the Palestinian leaders -- are too weak to take such bold steps. The President is on his way out, and we don’t know what kind of leadership at the White House we’re going to have next year.

Host: David Pollock, in trying to push toward some kind of final issues, President Bush, while he was there, did utter certain words that seemed to have a lot of impact with regard to those final issues -- talking about trying to push for the 1949 borders and using the word “occupation” in referring to some Israeli settlements.

Pollock: Yes. Yes, he did. Right, yeah. Right, yeah.

Host: Does his being there and using certain language affect the terms of the debate?

Pollock: I actually don’t think that that makes much difference, because there wasn’t, in my view, anything really new in anything that the President had to say. These have been long-standing, for the most part, American positions, at least for the last several years. And it’s true that the words were a little different. And the fact that he was saying it in the region makes some difference -- the symbolism of it. But I don’t see that as really adding to the discussion in a big way. What I would like, though, to comment on, is Salameh’s point about the weakness of all three leaders that are involved in this discussion right now, and I think he’s right that they’re weak. At the same time, there is an argument, and I have some sympathy for it, that it’s precisely the weakness of these leaders that might drive them to reach a little further and see if they can come up with some kind of, at least, piece of paper or some kind of understanding, some announcement or declaration of principles, because I think all three of them see that as, perhaps, their last chance to improve their standing in the public, to preserve their political power, in the case of Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, and to leave some kind of a positive legacy for their term in office on these issues, so that it may, paradoxically, be their very weakness and the time limit that President Bush’s last year in office sets on all of this that serves as a kind of incentive for them to move forward.

Host: Salameh Nematt, what do you think about that?

Nematt: I’m not sure that weakness is something that could help the leaders take such bold steps.

Pollock: Yeah.

Nematt: But the fact is that the weakness of the Olmert government prevented it from taking an important step towards giving a sense of seriousness about the whole process when it failed to hold the building of settlements, the expansion of existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Considering that the Bush administration is pushing for this as a serious effort, I’m afraid that the move to expand the settlements in East Jerusalem and Har Homa is an indication that the Israeli side is unable to commit itself to the road map for negotiations and the preconditions to convince the other side, the Palestinian side, that they’re serious. How can you say that you want to negotiate a settlement that would return Palestinian territories or most of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, if you end up building settlements, acquiring land, and confiscating land from the Palestinians and building settlements, illegal settlements on them? I’m afraid that the process itself has been seriously undermined by Israel’s inability or refusal to hold settlements in the Palestinian territories, at least, while negotiations are being pursued towards a solution.

Host: David Pollock, one of the other things that President Bush was trying to do on this trip was to get other governments in the region more involved in supporting finding some kind of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Pollock: Right. Right. Yeah, sure.

Host: Any progress on that effort?

Pollock: No. That one, I would have to say, came up really short of the mark. It was very hard to see that there were any new gestures or statements, let alone any tangible new contributions by any of the other countries in the region to support this process. And I think that all of them are adopting a kind of wait-and-see approach, at best, at this point -- very skeptical that anything much is going to come of this. And it may be that, if things do start moving, that we might see some symbolic gesture of support from some of the Arab governments, but I thin k that’s an area where -- Their approach seems to be, “Let’s see if Israel,” as Salameh was just saying, “is really serious about this, and then maybe we’ll do something -- not before.”

Host: One of the other issues that President Bush was trying to rally some regional support behind was opposition to growing power of Iran in the region. Let’s hear what he had to say about that:

Bush: "Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will be a threat if the international community does not come together and prevent that nation from the development of the know-how to build a nuclear weapon."

Host: Salameh Nematt, what’s your sense of how people in the region respond to President Bush’s exhortation to get serious about the threat from Iran?

Nematt: I think that the President’s argument against Iran has been weakened by the National Intelligence Estimate, saying that Iran is not developing weapons and a nuclear weapon. Now, the fact is, the President did not say what is really more important for him, actually, I think, on the regional level, is that Iran is challenging U.S. influence in that part of the world. Iran is in intervention in Iraq, weakening the Iraqi government, backing the pro-Iran militias there that continue to create a problem, as well as, also, supporting and arming al-Qaida operatives in Iraq, to keep the government weak so that Iran can spread its influence in that country. This, I think, is a major, major threat to American interests in that part of the world, not to mention the interests of the Iraqi government. The other intervention is in Lebanon, where Iran maintains, supports, and arms Hezbollah and an armed militia that is not under the control of the government that is weakening the elected government of Lebanon and preventing it from taking steps in line with the will of the international community and the will of the majority of the Lebanese, not to mention the Iranian, also, support for Hamas. And partly -- They’re partly responsible for the split between Hamas and Fatah and for the coup that Hamas staged against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. So if we really look at the region, it looks like Iran is the common denominator in every crisis in the region, from Iraq to Lebanon, going through Palestine. And as such, the President would have been better able to sell his case to the Arab states had he pointed out the Iranian threats to the neighboring states. We forgot to mention Bahrain, which has a Shi’ite majority agitated by the Iranians. And, of course, the Iranians are wanting to basically control the oil region through using means that are not exactly friendly. So, in a sense, I think the President will not be able to convince the Arab states to rally behind him to contain Iran on the nuclear issue. A lot of people don’t believe that there is such a threat. But he would be much more successful if he actually laid out the threats in relationship to regional influence and the Iranian intervention in these crises.

Host: David Pollock, what do you think about that? And what would it mean to rally the Arab states?

Pollock: Right. Right.

Host: What can they bring to the table, in terms of countering the Iranian threat at this point?

Pollock: Good, yeah. Good question. First of all, I agree with Salameh on all of those points. I think that’s exactly the way I see it. And I think the Arab governments and, for that matter, the Arab peoples and the United States have common interests in countering Iranian subversion and terrorism and military adventurism all around the region, even without nuclear weapons, and that’s going on right now. And I think the more we can focus people’s attention on that, the more the political damage caused by the release of the National Intelligence Estimate about a slowdown, so-called, in Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, can be repaired. I would also add to that list something that I heard just yesterday from a very senior British official involved in the region, who pointed out that, in his view, based on the reports that he gets from the region, that Iranian activity in Afghanistan against that government and its support of the Taliban and other rogue or fundamentalist extremists in Afghanistan has actually increased lately. And that helps to account -- he believes, and it sounds very plausible to me -- for some of the new problems that we and the Afghans are facing in that part of the region, on the other side of Iran’s borders. So, to answer your question, given all of these problems, what can regional countries do about them? I think, in the case of the Arab governments, especially the ones in the Gulf, the main leverage that they have is economic. And there’s actually quite a fair amount that those countries could do, if they decide to do it, to restrict economic dealings with Iran and to impose greater pressure, economic pressure, on Iran.

Host: We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. I want to move to one of the other main topics of the Bush visit to the region, which is this agenda that President Bush has had, announced in his second inaugural address, that he was going to push for freedom and democracy, particularly in the region. This was restated. President Bush visited Egypt at the end of his trip and met with President Mubarak and didn’t really give him a hard time about what seems to have been stalled efforts at democracy in Egypt. Where stands the effort to try to bring greater democracy to the Middle East, Salameh Nematt?

Nematt: I think that the drive for democratization now is stuck with the rhetoric in the sense that there are priorities on the regional level more important than, at this stage, than democracy promotion, especially when that democracy promotion could annoy a lot of U.S. allies in the region that are not democratic. Countries like Saudi Arabia, a country like Egypt, and a country like Jordan -- these are not democracies, and they don’t like the idea of the U.S. coming and telling them what they should do, as far as dealing with their own political regimes. I think that the President is speaking for the future. He’s already toppled one of the bloodiest dictators in the region, Saddam Hussein. He’s toppled the Taliban regime. He feels he’s already kicked the door open for the possibility of this domino effect eventually working, once Iraq is fixed, once the Lebanon crisis is resolved, and the Palestinian issue has improved. So, in a sense, the President is talking about the future. He knows that this is his last year in office. He wants to be remembered as the person who stuck to his guns, as far as democracy promotion is concerned. Even if there were no steps being taken on the ground today in that direction, the priority now is for security and stability. You cannot promote democracy if the regimes in the region are too scared because of the Iranian threat on the one hand and the threat of terrorism on the other.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word for today. But I’d like to thank my guests -- David Pollock, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Middle East analyst and former Washington bureau chief for Al-Hayat international newspaper, Salameh Nematt. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On The Line,” I’m Eric Felten.