Word: mubarak
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...Hopes for a summit, which was to be hosted by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and was aimed at getting the two sides down to business, evaporated after the Palestinian leadership sniffed at the Clinton proposals and asked the White House for more details...
...fuss is being duly kicked up. Administration officials told the New York Times on Wednesday that Clinton got favorable responses to the proposals from Mubarak, Jordan's King Abdullah II, and King Fahd in Saudi Arabia - much warmer responses, anyway, than Clinton got from the moderate trio after Camp David in July. But with the summit off and Arafat making the rounds, the Arab tone turned a bit nastier...
...Egypt's leading newspaper, chief editor and Mubarak confidant Samir Ragab wrote that Arabs "unanimously rejected" the nature of the U.S. proposals. "This offer does not meet Arab and Palestinian interests and there is nothing which will force us to accept it." In Lebanon, a Foreign Ministry official renewed his country's objections to "any agreement between Palestinians and Israelis that may be related to the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon without Lebanon being party to the agreement." Of course that means Syria has to come too - and Thursday the mouthpiece Syria Times nixed the proposals too. The plan...
...reflect an attempt to shore up Washington's own diplomatic standing in a region where it is regarded as overwhelmingly partial to Israel. But the angry men and women on the Arab street make no distinction between Israel and the U.S., and that makes it even more difficult for Mubarak or Jordan's King Abdullah to be seen as doing Washington's bidding. In other words, despite Washington's efforts, don't expect to see those ambassadors returning before there's some gesture from Israel that Jordan and Egypt can sell to the streets...
Washington's scramble to repair Israel's diplomatic bridges to the Arab world may be too little, too late. Defense Secretary William Cohen met Wednesday with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and implored him to reverse Cairo's decision to recall its ambassador from Israel. But having made the dramatic diplomatic gesture in protest against Israel's bombardment of Gaza Monday night in retaliation for the bombing of a school bus, the Egyptian leader can't very easily reverse it now - not even under pressure from the U.S., which pays Egypt some $2 billion a year to be Israel...