US Sending Invitations For Middle East Conference
By David Gollust
State Department
20 November 2007
The United States has begun sending invitations for the Middle East peace conference it is holding next week in Annapolis, Maryland, near Washington. The aim of the conference, to include about 40 countries and international organizations, is to formally re-launch Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
With Israeli and Palestinian officials still struggling to come up with a policy document for the conference, the Bush administration has not yet officially announced the meeting or said exactly who will attend.
But the State Department has confirmed that U.S. diplomats in the Middle East and elsewhere have begun delivering invitations, starting with the main participants, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The meeting itself is due to begin late Monday with a dinner gathering in Washington, after which the parties will go to the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis for a full day of meetings Tuesday, mostly behind closed doors.
A media event, possibly at the White House, will close the meeting on Wednesday.
President Bush first proposed the gathering last July, saying he wanted to jump-start negotiations on a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict after a seven-year freeze.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will host the meeting, made several trips to the region to prepare for the talks.
It became evident some time ago that the Annapolis meeting would not attempt to resolve the difficult final-status issues of the peace process such as the status of Jerusalem and the rights of Palestinian refugees.
State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack says the conference document will be substantive, but that Annapolis should be seen more as a jumping-off point for negotiations that U.S. officials and the parties hope can yield a peace accord by the end of President Bush's term in January of 2009.
"The document is significant, he said. "But you should look at Annapolis really as almost a beginning of something new, as opposed to an end-point in and of itself. But it's an important event and the parties are working hard in the run-up to it. We're working in the run-up to it as well as others."
Most invitees are being asked to send foreign ministers. To boost the political credibility of the process, administration officials are hoping for a sizable turnout of ministers from Arab countries including U.S. Gulf allies that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
They say invitations are going to all 13 member countries of the Arab League committee set up earlier this year to promote the organization's 2002 peace initiative. It offered Israel Arab-wide political recognition in return for a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians, including statehood.
Syria is a member of the committee but has balked at attending the conference unless it is allowed to raise the issue of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War.
Spokesman McCormack said the focus of the Annapolis meeting will be the Israeli-Palestinian track, but that delegates will have an opportunity at some point to raise other issues pertaining to a comprehensive peace.
Annapolis participants will also include senior officials of the international Middle East Quartet, which is made up of Russia, the European Union and the United Nations as well as the United States.
The Quartet regional envoy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is expected to attend as well as representatives of other organizations including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
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