As Bush Starts To Listen, Peres Calls The Baker Report ‘Wishful Thinking’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — As President Bush sets out on a listening tour of the national security bureaucracy to hear options for the war in Iraq, America’s allies in the Middle East are urging him to reject proposals offered by the Iraq Study Group.
Over the weekend, Israeli and Iraqi leaders picked apart key recommendations from the group, which is headed by a former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, Lee Hamilton. Both Iraq and Israel rejected the diplomatic elements of the group’s plan that most appealed to Sunni Arab leaders.
Yesterday, the deputy Israeli prime minister and a leading advocate of Israeli-Arab negotiations, Shimon Peres, told CNN that renewed pressure for a final settlement between the two sides, as the Iraq Study Group suggests, fails to address the divide among the Palestinian Arabs. “The problem is not so much how to build a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but how to unite Palestinians,” he said.
Mr. Peres, who shared in a Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Rabin, also said any proposal at this point for Israeli talks with Syria over the return of the Golan Heights is “wishful thinking.”
In Baghdad, President Talabani was even tougher in his assessment of the group’s report. The recommendations amount to “very dangerous articles, which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the constitution,” he said.
In particular, Mr. Talabani chafed at the suggestion that key questions ironed out in the Iraqi constitution, such as the federal system and the embedding of more American soldiers in Iraqi units, countered the desire of Iraqis to control their army.
He also took a shot at Mr. Baker, who as President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state endorsed the formal Syrian occupation of Lebanon through the Taif Agreement. “We smell in this report the attitude of James Baker. We see this as an insult to the people of Iraq,” he said.
Prime Minister al-Maliki also derided the report’s recommendation that a regional conference toward reconciliation be held outside Iraq.
The recommendations for a summit among Iraq’s neighbors to stabilize Iraq, pressing Israel to negotiate with a Palestinian Arab delegation, and reopening the Iraqi constitution will be the grist of Mr. Bush’s discussions this week with his administration.
The reaction to the report from some of America’s closest allies in the region is in stark contrast to the reception it has received among America’s foes.
Shortly after it was released on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, Buthaina Shaaban, told the BBC and Al-Jazeera that Syria appreciated how the report placed American policy in a regional context. A day later, Iran’s official news service quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying an American exit from Iraq would be the best step toward stabilizing the country.
American and Iraqi leaders have accused both Iran and Syria of arming and funding terrorists in Iraq.
While the report does not call for setting a date to withdraw all American soldiers from Iraq, it does say combat troops or forces confronting terrorists directly should be phased out in favor of a focus on training Iraq’s new military and police force. The report also predicts the possibility of withdrawing American forces from Iraq in the first quarter of 2008.
The outgoing defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, making his last tour of Iraq this weekend, told Marines in Anbar province that withdrawal in and of itself should not be an option. “The enemy must be defeated. We can certainly walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us,” he said.
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, the president echoed the theme of perseverance in the war. “The future of a vital region of the world and the security of the American people depend on victory in Iraq,” he said. “I’m confident that we can move beyond our political differences and come together to achieve that victory.”
The choice of the word “victory” — as opposed to “success,” which his top advisers have used in recent weeks — is an indication of what kind of advice Mr. Bush will seek this week when he meets with his national security team. He is scheduled to give a speech laying out his new Iraq strategy before Christmas.