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Obama to Meet Netanyahu & Abbas
JERUSALEM, Sept 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's summit this week with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders does not signal a full re-launch of peace talks, which remain blocked by profound disagreement, a Palestinian official said on Sunday.
"The meeting does not mean negotiations," a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas said after the White House announced the first encounter between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the latter took office in March.
The summit will take place on Tuesday in New York during the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. officials said. They called it a mark of the president's personal commitment to Middle East peace but played down the prospect of major immediate developments.
"These three leaders are going to sit down in the same room and continue to narrow the gaps," a U.S. official said.
However, neither side has shown any shift away from the deadlock that was evident on Friday when Obama's special envoy George Mitchell completed a week shuttling around the region.
Each blamed the other for a failure to re-launch talks that were suspended in December while Israel and Hamas fought in the Gaza Strip. Many analysts doubt Obama's ability to end six decades of conflict in his quest to stabilise the Middle East.
Israel welcomed a meeting "without preconditions". But Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah repeated Palestinian demands, echoed by Washington since Obama took office in January, that Netanyahu should halt settlement expansion before full-blown talks resume.
On Friday, Netanyahu offered Mitchell a nine-month freeze in settlement building in the West Bank, Israeli officials said, adding that Mitchell was pressing for a one-year freeze. Abbas wants an open-ended halt that also includes East Jerusalem.
Abu Rdainah also reiterated a demand that Israel commit from the start of negotiations to reaching permanent resolutions of all the core issues of the conflict -- including borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu, who highlights the fact that Abbas's authority is limited since Islamist Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, has suggested talks focus on interim improvements in security and prosperity.
HAMAS REJECTION
Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, addressing worshippers in Gaza on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, repeated that Hamas would not recognise any compromise agreement Abbas made with Israel.
One or two rockets were fired overnight at Israel from Gaza, the Israeli army said. As with most such sporadic fire since last winter's war in the enclave, there was no report of damage or injury as Israel took a holiday to mark the Jewish New Year.
Israel signed up to a U.S.-backed peace plan in 2003, the "road map". It called for a halt to building in the Jewish settlements that Palestinians say are eating away at the viability of a future state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
While Netanyahu has been under the heaviest U.S. pressure on Israel in years, he has insisted settlers should be allowed to continue building as their families grow and rules out any discussion on sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians.
Abu Rdainah said: "First, negotiations should focus on the six final status issues without any postponement of any issue.
"Second, all settlement must be halted.
"This meeting (on Tuesday) does not mean we are restarting negotiations because there is no agreement on these two issues."
A senior Netanyahu aide said: "The meeting will be held without preconditions, as the prime minister had always wanted."
Mitchell praised Obama for stepping in: "It is another sign of the president's deep commitment to comprehensive peace."
But though Israeli and Palestinian officials have long said they were unlikely to scorn a joint invitation from Obama, both sides are deeply sceptical of his ability to bring peace.
"The Americans have failed to convince the Israelis to halt settlement and now they want a photo opportunity," a Palestinian official said on Sunday. "It's a victory for Netanyahu."
An Israeli official last week cited the rift between Abbas and Hamas and the strength of settlers in Netanyahu's coalition for not expecting the mutual concessions needed to make peace.
"With all due respect to Obama, this is not realistic," he said. "Everyone wants a process ... but nobody actually wants peace -- because peace, you have to pay for." (Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in the West Bank, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Janet Lawrence) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to
blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)
Russians soldiers sit on the launcher of a Tochka-M short range missile placed on the EU?s eastern border to counter the proposed US defence installations in Eastern Europe. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The fatal blow in the lingering demise of the missile defence scheme delivered by Barack Obama may well have been struck in New York, in one of the aseptic negotiating rooms at the UN.
Discussions on a US-drafted resolution on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation had been underway for weeks when, out of the blue, Russia came up with objections to a text that is supposed to be the centrepiece of an extraordinary nuclear summit at the UN next Thursday to be chaired by Obama.
He is pushing for a bold collective statement that will help set the world on a trajectory to a future without nuclear weapons. Most security council resolutions end up being watered down. But the potential failure of next week's summit represents a threat to Obama's global agenda, much of which is focused sharply on the threat of proliferation.
The UN stalemate was yet another reminder that that agenda, outlined by Obama in Prague in April, was doomed without a more co-operative relationship with Russia. And the most immediate, emotive barrier was the plan – now scrapped by Obama – to deploy elements of the missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
To the Russians it was a symbol, and the most irritating example of the US's failure to take their concerns into account. Moscow did not believe assurances that the scheme was a shield against the potential threat of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles. The Russians saw it as an attempt to sap their deterrent against a US first strike.
Obama's bold and extraordinarily risky foreign policy ambitions could easily unravel even without missile defence. But clinging to the scheme – based on untested technology against a distant and uncertain threat – meant that Russia would block American influence at every turn.
A week after the security council meeting the permanent five members, together with Germany, are due to sit down with an Iranian delegation, for a critical meeting on Iran's nuclear programme. Tehran says it will turn up but not negotiate on that programme, which it insists is peaceful and its sovereign right.
The US, Britain, and France want to threaten oil and gas sanctions if Tehran does not suspend the enrichment of uranium, but those threats carry less weight without Russian support. Moscow's acquiescence would also bring on board China, whose guiding principle is never to be isolated in the council.
If anything could knock the hardline clerical regime in Tehran off course, it is the prospect of a united security council brandishing meaningful sanctions.
Two months later, on 5 December, the 18-year-old Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) is due to expire. US and Russian negotiators are racing to strike an arms control deal that will take its place, cutting deployed strategic warheads on each side to a lower limit of 1,500 each.
The talks were supposed to exclude missile defence, but a diplomat monitoring the negotiations said the Russians kept bringing the issue up. "It was a major impediment. Agreement was being hindered," the diplomat said.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, believes the wheels will start turning more rapidly. "We can expect the Start talks to be completed by the December deadline and the bilateral atmosphere will surely improve," he said.
A gap between the death of the old treaty and the birth of the new could be filled by some diplomatic improvisation. Far more important is what happens the day after the new agreement – "Start plus" as it is provisionally known – comes into force. Will it be seen as the end of a process, or the start of a new round, aimed at deeper cuts, and a new era in arms control?
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said: "The deferral of the [missile defence] system and pursuit of other options will open the way for deeper US-Russian strategic arms reductions – below the 1,500 warheads – and perhaps increase Russia's willingness to join the US in coming down harder on Iran."
If the momentum can be maintained, Obama has a fighting chance of finding support in the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China would then almost certainly follow suit, and the treaty would enter into force, prohibiting nuclear tests, and providing a powerful legal barrier to proliferation.
In such circumstances, there is hope for the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is up for review next May. The NPT, as Obama put it in his Prague speech, is a "bargain" between the nuclear weapons states and the non-weapons states.
"Countries with nuclear weapons will move towards disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them, and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy," the president said.
For four decades, the NPT has slowed the spread of nuclear weapons. There are now nine states with nuclear weapons rather than the original five, but the world has not seen the disastrous cascade of proliferation once predicted. But the bargain is now wearing thin.
A failure to maintain momentum behind disarmament, combined with continued Iranian progress on its nuclear programme, and an unsuccessful NPT conference next May would create the conditions for a possible conflict between Israel and Iran and the spread of nuclear weapons across the Middle East. It is a nightmare scenario and the inverse of the hopeful future Obama invoked in Prague.
A solid US-Russian relationship is the key. Much will depend on the response from Moscow. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to Nato, gave some room for hope, albeit in macabre terms.
"It's like having a decomposing corpse in your flat – and then the mortician comes and takes it away," Rogozin said. "This means we're getting rid of one of those niggling problems which prevented us from doing the real work."
Star wars years
March 23rd 1983 Ronald Reagan gives a nationally televised speech in which he proposes the Strategic Defence Initiative, saying it will protect the US from nuclear attack from land and space.
1991 George H W Bush announces the refocusing of the SDI programme from Soviet missile attack to Global Protection Against Limited Strikes.
1993 Clinton changes the name of SDI to Ballistic Missive Defence Organisation as the fresh focus on smaller so-called "theatre" missiles is reinforced.
1999 US Senate and House vote for a national missile defence system.
2002 Bush changes the name of BMDO to Missile Defence Agency.
2003 British government signs a US agreement to upgrade the RAF Fylingdales radar station near Whitby as part of the US missile defence shield.
2008 At Reagan's SDI 25th anniversary dinner, Dick Cheney underscores the importance for the next president to continue supporting missile defence.
2008 In July Condoleezza Rice signs a deal for a US missile base in the Czech Republic to defend the US and allies against any attacks from Iran.
2008 In August Rice signs deal with Polish officials to base 10 interceptor missiles along Baltic Sea coast.
“We’re not just talking about Americans in poverty, either — we’re talking about middle-class Americans,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. “In other words, it can happen to anyone.”
“I refuse to allow that future to happen,” Mr. Obama said. “In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they’ll go without health insurance — not for one year, not for one month, not for one day. And once I sign my health reform plan into law, they won’t.”
The president is expected to make that same argument later on Saturday in Minneapolis, in the first of a series of rallies intended to whip up public support for his health care bill. The second is planned for Thursday, at the University of Maryland in College Park.
The White House hopes the rallies will provide a powerful visual — thousands of boisterous Americans cheering in support of health reform — to counter the negative images that emerged during Congressional town meetings over the summer, where critics of Mr. Obama turned out in force. With anti-tax groups who oppose Mr. Obama’s policies staging their own rally in Washington on Saturday, the president can ill afford to cede the airwaves to his opponents.
Mr. Obama and his aides regard the next few months as the final, critical chapter in his effort to close the deal with Congress and the public on health care, an effort that began with the president’s address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. If legislation is going to pass, the president will have to convince the estimated 180 million Americans who already have insurance that there is something in it for them.
The Treasury report is an attempt to do that. It is a fresh analysis of data conducted by the University of Michigan, called the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which tracked more than 17,000 Americans — more than 6,000 families — from 1997 through 2006, and included questions about health insurance status. The department looked at Americans under age 65, who are not covered by Medicare, the government program to provide health care for the elderly, and sliced the data various ways.
It found, for example, that 57 percent of Americans under 21 were uninsured at some point, for one month or longer, during the 10-year period. More than half of all rural Americans, 53 percent, lacked coverage at some point. So did 45 percent of Americans with household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000.