Race against time
The roadmap is floundering, and the ball appears firmly in Washington's court. Nevine Khalil reports on Cairo's efforts to salvage Middle East peace
While the threat on the immediate future of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat seems to have subsided, the US presidential elections are also looming on the horizon. This dynamic has caused Cairo to warn that the peace process roadmap may be lost forever if progress on its implementation does not occur soon.
This week, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was in the US to attend the UN General Assembly's 58th session, chair a meeting of Arab foreign ministers and meet with several top American officials in Washington. Maher plans on taking issue with Israel's threats to exile Arafat from the Palestinian territories as well as Tel Aviv's procrastination on the peace process. Maher's talks are part of Egypt's current efforts to convince the US administration to shift their focus on the roadmap's implementation into higher gear.
The upcoming US presidential race, according to President Hosni Mubarak, is certain to distract from any serious progress in the Middle East peace process. Mubarak told reporters on Sunday that the Middle East conflict would take a backseat once the US presidential campaigning begins. He urged that real steps must be taken to implement the roadmap -- which is sponsored by the diplomatic Quartet, which includes the US, EU, Russia and the UN. "If the roadmap plan is not adhered to, matters will become difficult," said Mubarak, after inaugurating a mega IT project just outside of Cairo.
Although he noted that US President George W Bush remains committed to putting the peace process back on track, as well as the implementation of the roadmap and a two-state solution, Mubarak also stressed that more was required from both the Palestinians and the Israelis. He said, "the Palestinians and Israelis need to cooperate, and the Israeli side [should] work towards that end." During contacts with "all concerned parties in the Middle East", Mubarak urged a rapid and serious implementation of the roadmap. He added that any Palestinian prime minister would be unsuccessful unless he won the support "of both the Palestinian Authority as well as the Israeli government".
Meanwhile, in New York on Monday, Maher chaired a meeting of Arab foreign ministers on the sidelines of the 58th session of the UN General Assembly. The meeting's agenda focussed on the Palestinian issue as well as the situation in Iraq -- both topics which Maher also discussed with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The Palestinian and Iraqi issues were also the main items on the table during Maher's scheduled meetings with US Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On Saturday, Egypt hailed the General Assembly resolution rejecting Israel's threats to expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat as a "correction" of the US veto of a similar resolution at the UN Security Council. "The resolution adopted by the General Assembly corrects the error made by the Security Council," Maher told reporters before heading to the US.
Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed by the Assembly cannot be vetoed -- but they are also not legally binding. "Whether the resolution is binding or not, the fact that Israel ignores a text which expresses international legitimacy is extremely serious," Maher said.
