Syria has now agreed to come aboard for the Anapolis Middle East meeting. Bear in mind it's not even being billed as a conference. And it's for one day only. It's hard to conceive that despite all the talk and photos, that anything can come of the meeting. All the signs are far from positive.
The Washington Post, viewing things from an American perspective, assesses the upcoming meeting:
"When the Middle East peace conference kicks off Tuesday in Annapolis, President Bush will deliver the opening speech and also conduct three rounds of personal diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Such an active role is notable for a president who has never visited Israel while in office, who has made only one trip to Egypt and Jordan to promote peace efforts, and who has left the task of relaunching the peace process largely in the hands of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
Rice logged 100,000 miles shuttling back and forth to the Middle East eight times over the past year, telling Israeli and Arab officials that despair can lead to radicalism, and that a generation of Arab youth may be lost if there is no progress on a Palestinian state. "Failure is not an option," Rice has often declared.
Her efforts thus far have yielded this one-day meeting in Annapolis. But Arab officials are skeptical that the conference will amount to much, in part because Bush has remained relatively silent on the matter since he announced the peace talks this summer, said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served as Bush's ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. "You don't get a sense that he's invested in it," Kurtzer said. "Nobody associates President Bush with this policy."
The Washington Post, viewing things from an American perspective, assesses the upcoming meeting:
"When the Middle East peace conference kicks off Tuesday in Annapolis, President Bush will deliver the opening speech and also conduct three rounds of personal diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Such an active role is notable for a president who has never visited Israel while in office, who has made only one trip to Egypt and Jordan to promote peace efforts, and who has left the task of relaunching the peace process largely in the hands of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
Rice logged 100,000 miles shuttling back and forth to the Middle East eight times over the past year, telling Israeli and Arab officials that despair can lead to radicalism, and that a generation of Arab youth may be lost if there is no progress on a Palestinian state. "Failure is not an option," Rice has often declared.
Her efforts thus far have yielded this one-day meeting in Annapolis. But Arab officials are skeptical that the conference will amount to much, in part because Bush has remained relatively silent on the matter since he announced the peace talks this summer, said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served as Bush's ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. "You don't get a sense that he's invested in it," Kurtzer said. "Nobody associates President Bush with this policy."
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