Jordan Times
Sunday, October 7, 2001

'King urged US to support peace process before terror attacks'

By a staff reporter

The suggestion was included in a five-page letter the King sent to Bush on Sept. 8, three days before the terror attacks in New York and Washington, Jordanian officials said on Saturday.

The spirit of the letter was apparently reflected in Bush's unprecedented remarks on Tuesday that a Palestinian state had always been part of a US vision for Middle East peace so long as the right of the state of Israel was also recognised, guaranteed and accepted by all parties.

The acknowledgement, an apparent effort to cement Arab support on terrorism, was the first such by a Republican president.

While most Arab states have welcomed Bush's statement as a significant shift in the US position and urged him to translate the vision into policies, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed anger.

He likened the White House stand to the 1938 Munich conference when Western states “sacrificed Czechoslovakia” to appease Adolf Hitler.

Washington issued a scathing retort to its “closest Middle East ally.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: “The president believes that these remarks are unacceptable. Israel could have no better or stronger friend than the United States and better friend than President Bush.”

Jordanian and other Arab officials had been exchanging views with top US officials over the deadlocked peace process before the attacks which apparently postponed the announcement of a comprehensive Middle East peace initiative.

In his letter to Bush, the King spoke about the need for a “new approach and vision as policies of the past have reached a dangerous dead end.”

According to excerpts from the letter made available to The Jordan Times, the King told Bush that “only you can provide the leadership” needed.

The King, who said he wanted to share his perceptions on Mideast peace with the US president, underscored the importance of achieving a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338.

He also called for the resumption of Israel's peace talks with the Palestinians, the Lebanese and the Syrians.

He said peace efforts “were in jeopardy” because policies to help implement UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 failed “without a clear, agreed overall objective and a coherent strategy to achieve it. Each party had its own agenda and in the absence of a clear strategy, crisis management became the standard recourse, dealing with symptoms, not causes.”

The King said that the legacy “you have inherited” and the “challenge we now face is a comprehensive regional peace: recognised borders, mutual security (non-proliferation leading to a nuclear free zone), economic cooperation and the free flow of people, money and goods”.

He said regional peace based on resolutions 242 and 338 meant that all states in the region have to be involved — Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other Arab states — adding that a “piecemeal approach to peace” cannot be pursued.

“It is very important to return to these (two) principles... Arab states in the long-term hold the key to Israel's security,” he added in the letter.

He said even though Middle East problems were directly related to each other, “Israel preferred to deal with each problem in isolation”.

The King told Bush that Israel and the Palestinians have been negotiating for the past several years under a “false premise”.

He reiterated that the level of confidence between the two parties had hit record lows because Israel used the confidence-building measures to increase the settlements in the West Bank, a major obstacle in the path of the peace process.

“Land for peace is the solution to Israel and the Palestinians as both sides have conflicting views on the future of the West Bank”, he said.

The King said settlements contradict the principles of international law and remain a major obstacle to achieving peace based on 242. “Peace and settlements are mutually exclusive,” the monarch added.

The King told Bush it was very important to reaffirm that peace will only be achieved through the creation of a Palestinian state with Israeli forces withdrawing to the pre-June 4, 1967 borders in line with UN resolution 242.

The King said Israel and the Palestinians, for the first time in 34 years, discussed at the Camp David II and at the Taba meetings “solutions to the final status issues — refugees, territory and Jerusalem. It took them a long time and hard effort to get there, therefore... one has to build on what was achieved”.

King Abdullah called for the swift implementation of the US-sponsored Mitchell Report taking into consideration the following:

— Speeding up final status talks.

— The cooling-off periods and confidence-building measures should be kept to a minimum due to the time factor.

— Ceasefire terms should be tied to commencement of negotiations and not an ambiguous end of violence. There must be a trade-off as there will be no popular incentive to end the violence. An announcement by the US that it would support the commencement of negotiations to establish a Palestinian state and permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians as soon as every reasonable effort has been made to stop the violence could provide an incentive.

— A freeze on settlements, including natural growth during the talks, should be rigorously enforced as Israel has routinely circumvented this requirement in the past to continue this practice, the continuation of which will sabotage any possible hope for the future.

The King added that Israel should be assured of “its legitimate security needs” for peace to be durable.

And as a compromise, “Israel must give up the dream of greater Israel and the Palestinians and the Arabs have to give up the dream of greater Palestine”.

October 7, 2001