October 21, 2005
latimes.com : World News
THE WORLD
Bush Recasts Mideast Goals
# A Palestinian state might not be realized before he leaves office, as he had once hoped, the president says after a meeting with Abbas.
By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — President Bush conceded Thursday that Palestinians may not have an independent state before his term ends in three years, as he had once envisioned.
After a White House meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush told a news conference that the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August had provided the two sides a "magnificent opportunity" to move toward peace. But he said he could not predict when the goal of an independent state would be reached, because "there will be moments of progress, and there will be moments of setback."
Bush said as recently as last year that he believed the goal could be reached during his term.
A U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map" projected that there could be an independent Palestine adjacent to Israel as early as 2005, provided the two sides met mutually accepted goals.
"The key is to keep moving forward," Bush said.
Palestinians had been encouraged by most of Bush's statements at the news conference, but "zeroed in" on his comments about the uncertain target date for creation of the Palestinian state, said Edward Abington, an advisor to the Palestinians and a former U.S. State Department official.
"They thought he was not as they hoped he would be," Abington said.
Bush, in his remarks, pressed the Palestinian Authority to get tough with militants, as Israel has insisted, but gave little indication of progress on issues of concern to Palestinians, such as their demand for freer movement between Gaza and the West Bank.
Bush called for movement on issues that would help the Palestinian economy, including opening the important new crossing between Egypt and Gaza, south of Rafah, and beginning work on a Gaza seaport.
He called for Israel to take steps to "improve daily lives of the Palestinians" and not to make unilateral decisions on issues still subject to final negotiations between the two sides.
As he has many times, Bush called on the Israelis to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts in Palestinian territory, stop settlement expansion and make sure that the route of the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank is not based on political considerations.
Bush said James Wolfensohn, the international advisor on the Palestinian economy, would continue to serve in that post until next spring.
Many expected Bush to press Abbas to require that any candidate for the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary election renounce violence.
But Abington said Bush did not make such a demand at the private meeting.
U.S. and Israeli officials, as well as some Palestinians, fear that the militant group Hamas could gain a sizable legislative bloc in the January election.
U.S. officials would not deal with anyone considered a terrorist who wins political office, said a White House official who asked to remain anonymous. At the same time, the official said, "we believe that the decision of who participates in Palestinian elections should be left to the Palestinians."
In his comments, Abbas reiterated his view that legislators should be asked to renounce violence once they have been elected.
In this way, the Palestinians could reach the goal of disarming militant groups, to give the territories "one authority" and "one law," he said.
Earlier in the day, in advance of the Bush-Abbas talks, the head of Israel's powerful parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz, employed strong language in demanding that the Palestinian leader act resolutely against groups such as Hamas.
"Either he fights terror and disarms the
organizations, or Israel will behave toward him as it did toward his predecessor, and isolate him in the Muqata," Steinitz told Israel's Itim news agency, referring to the ruined Ramallah, West Bank, headquarters where Yasser Arafat was confined for most of the last three years of his life.
Some analysts took Bush's comments Thursday as a sign that he would refrain from directing the peace talks, and instead follow the lead of the two sides, as he did during his first term.
David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted the gap between Abbas' call Thursday to move ahead on the peace plan and Bush's focus on shorter-term issues, such as disarming militants.
"Abbas is saying, 'Let's fast-forward the tape.' But Bush indicated that he's going to let the parties take the lead," he said.
In Israel, a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were no surprises in the Bush and Abbas remarks.
But in an unusual move, the Israeli Foreign Ministry on Thursday night declined to issue any official statement on the meeting.
Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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