Page 2 of 2 Rice faces formidable White
House foe By Jim Lobe
secretary of state Colin Powell,
the administration's strongest advocate for
resuming an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The same channel was used to line up
Bush's support for Sharon's unilateral
disengagement from Gaza, a scheme designed in part
to preempt growing pressure from Washington's
European and Arab allies to get a credible peace
process under way - this time in the form of the
long-delayed "roadmap"
sponsored by the Quartet (the
US, the European Union, the UN and Russia) - as
Washington's position in Iraq deteriorated in 2004
and 2005.
Sharon's disengagement plan, as
well as his departure from Likud to form the more
centrist Kadima Party, was opposed by US Christian
Right leaders and most hardline neo-conservatives,
including Perle, who had long been among Abrams'
closest associates. But Abrams himself, apparently
persuaded by Weisglass's argument that such a
preemptive move would gain Israel time to
consolidate its position on the West Bank and
create a precedent for imposing a final border
unilaterally, strongly defended the move.
Rice thought so highly of Abrams'
effectiveness that she considered appointing him
deputy secretary of state when she moved over to
the State Department in early 2005. But Bush's
political advisers said his appointment would set
off a major and costly confirmation battle and
instead suggested that he be promoted to deputy
national security adviser.
Signs of a
serious breach between the Rice and Abrams,
however, surfaced during the first days of last
summer's Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Rice
reportedly favored a request by Olmert for
Washington discreetly to contact Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad about securing the release of two
Israeli soldiers captured by the Lebanese group.
Abrams not only strongly opposed such a move, but
in a meeting with a "very senior Israeli official"
in Jerusalem within 48 hours of the outbreak of
hostilities, also suggested that Washington would
have no objection if Israel extended its military
offensive from Lebanon to Syria, according to a
well-informed source who received an account of
the meeting from one of its participants.
Abrams' advice echoed similar appeals by
neo-conservatives, including Kristol, Perle and
his colleagues at the American Enterprise
Institute, such as David Frum, Newt Gingrich and
Danielle Pletka, who repeatedly attacked Olmert
for timidity in the conduct of the war and urged
the Bush administration to reject growing pressure
from Washington's European and Arab allies to
bring the war to an end. Rice herself became a
target of neo-conservative attacks as it became
clear that she was relaying that pressure to Bush
directly.
According to the New York Times,
Abrams, who accompanied Rice on all of her trips
to the region throughout the crisis, "kept in
direct contact with Mr Cheney's office", the last
stronghold of neo-conservatives, notably the vice
president's national security adviser, John
Hannah, and his Middle East adviser, David
Wurmser.
That breach has, by most
accounts, only become wider since the war's end,
as Rice has become increasingly sensitized to the
depth of anger in the Arab world directed against
both the US and Israel. She is acutely aware of
the impatience of Washington's Quartet partners to
leapfrog the roadmap and move toward "final
status" negotiations, as well as the difficulty in
rallying the pro-US Arab states against Iran in
the absence of a credible Israeli-Palestinian
peace process.
It is in that context that
Rice has been pushing for resuming a peace process
that could, at the very least, offer the
Palestinians a "political horizon" for a final
settlement involving large territorial concessions
by Israel. She has reportedly even reviewed the
hypothetical peace settlement negotiated
informally in 2003 by Israeli and Palestinian
politicians and retired military and intelligence
officials, known as the Geneva Initiative.
She has reportedly been encouraged by some
in the Israeli government, notably Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni, perhaps Olmert's most
serious political rival within the Kadima Party.
But, as in the Israel-Hezbollah war, Rice
is up against a formidable adversary in Abrams and
his confederates in the Vice President's Office
who appear once again to have established their
own direct line to Olmert, this time through
Turgeman and another top adviser, Yoram Turbowicz.
It was that channel that was in play last
Friday, on the eve of the Jerusalem talks, when
Olmert held a personal telephone conversation with
Bush and emerged claiming that the US president
had promised to boycott any new Palestinian
government of national unity that includes Hamas
so long as the Islamist party does not explicitly
recognize Israel, renounce violence, and pledge to
abide by existing agreements with the Palestine
Liberation Organization.
"The American and
Israeli positions are totally identical," Olmert
declared, in essence rejecting what had been
worked out in Mecca just a few days before and
dooming whatever hopes Rice had for a productive
summit last Sunday that could provide the effort
with some positive momentum that she could report
to the Quartet meeting in Berlin on Wednesday.
"For the first time in six years, the
secretary of state seems to be committed to moving
this process forward," Martin Indyk, director of
the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for
Middle East Policy and a former top policymaker
under Clinton, said last week before the meetings.
"But there are others in the administration who
want to 'Powellize' her," he added in a thinly
veiled reference to Abrams and his allies.
Indeed, Abrams and his friends in recent
days have appeared to be broadening their attack
on Rice. In an e-mail he fired off to his East
Asia colleagues and that was subsequently leaked
to the Washington Post, he complained about last
week's agreement with North Korea in the six-party
talks in Beijing, a complaint that has been
quickly picked up by other neo-conservatives.
Abrams had been "frustrated because so
many key decisions had been made at the highest
levels without much vetting by officials scattered
across the government", according to the Post's
sources - a charge echoed with some vehemence by
other allies, including Frum and former ambassador
to the UN John Bolton.
"The deal reveals a
breakdown of the administration's decision-making
process," Frum wrote this week, citing a New York
Times report that Rice had "bypassed layers of
government policy review that had derailed past
efforts to negotiate an agreement".
The
complaint was a particularly ironic one in light
of Abrams' role with the Iran-Contra scandal, his
own use of back channels, and his efforts, along
with Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices, to exclude
the State Department and Central Intelligence
Agency, during George W Bush's first term.
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