US diplomat tries to sell Bush Iraq plan to skeptical Arabs
(AP)Updated: 2007-01-15 20:07 JERUSALEM - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will attend a summit with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians in a bid to advance the peace process, US officials said Monday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, made his comment shortly after Rice left Israel for Egypt, where she is expected to seek support for the Iraqi government and US President George W. Bush's plan to turn the Iraqi war around.
Rice was schedule to fly later Monday to Saudi Arabia for talks with the same purpose. Her trips to the two major Arab states came on the same day that Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were hanged in Baghdad. On Tuesday she is scheduled to meet her counterparts from eight Arab countries in Kuwait.
Moderate Arab governments are expected to tell Rice they will help Washington stabilize Iraq if the US takes more active steps to revive a broad peace initiative between Israel and its neighbors.
King Abdullah II of Jordan, which Rice visited Sunday, warned the secretary that Iraqi political reconciliation would fail if Sunni Iraqis were not engaged in their country's decision-making.
"Any political process that doesn't ensure the participation of all segments of Iraqi society will fail and will lead to more violence," Abdullah told Rice, according to a statement by his press office.
"As a key component of the Iraqi social fabric, the Iraqi Sunni community must be included as partners in building Iraq's future," said the king, a leading US ally in the Middle East.
Along with other US allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Jordan is concerned about the growing Shiite Muslim influence, stretching from Iran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The fear is that the hardline Tehran government will dominate the Mideast and give rise to more extremism, jeopardizing a Mideast settlement and threatening those nations.
Bush's new strategy to send thousands more troops to Iraq met with strong skepticism across the Middle East, where many predicted that even with more soldiers, America would fail to break the cycle of violence.
Many saw the surge in troops as a desperate move that will only increase the United States' failures in Iraq - and could deepen the sectarian divides in the war-fractured country, leading to more bloodshed.
There were deep doubts that US troops, or the Shiite-led Iraqi government, would tackle what many in the Sunni-dominated Arab world see as the chief threat to Iraq: Shiite militias, blamed for fueling the cycle of sectarian slayings.
Mustafa al-Ani, a military analyst with the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said the American military has to take down the Shiite militias - particularly the most feared of them, the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Otherwise, the US will lose any support among Iraq's Sunnis, he said.
"We want to see from Day One that the Americans search Sadr City," Sadr's stronghold in Baghdad, as diligently as they search Sunni insurgent troublespots, al-Ani said. "Otherwise I don't see any chances for success."
Al-Maliki has resisted US pressure in the past to move against al-Sadr's militia, but last week the prime minister pledged to crack down on the Mahdi Army.
Many in the Arab world profoundly distrust al-Maliki's government, believing it is serving Iran's interests at the expense of Sunnis. Bush's plan depends heavily on al-Maliki to use Iraqi troops to crack down on militants from both sides and meet a series of benchmarks to promote reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites.
Arab allies have been asking the Bush administration to work harder for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, arguing that the lingering conflict undermines efforts to make progress on other Mideast problems, including in Iraq and Iran.
Arab officials said they will propose a broad bargain to Rice, dubbed "Iraq for Land."
The deal reflects widespread Arab feeling that a lasting Middle East peace is impossible unless Israel agrees to hand over lands it occupied during the 1967 Mideast war to the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.
In Israel on Monday, the Housing Ministry published newspaper advertisements that invited bids for the construction of 44 homes in the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank settlement, Maaleh Adumim.
The expansion of settlements violates an Israeli pledge to the United States and contradicts the long-stalled "road map" plan for peace, which both Rice and Israeli officials endorsed vigorously during her visit.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was traveling with Rice, said he was not aware of the advertisements, but added: "Our policy hasn't changed."
In Jordan, Abdullah told Rice that he wants Washington to apply as much diplomatic energy on the Israeli-Palestinian matter as on Iraq.
Abdullah "called on the United States to actively push for a revival of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations that would lead to the establishment of a viable, independent Palestinian state," the Jordanian statement said.
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