Roadmap talks yield hope, but little else

By JUSTIN HUGGLER in AQABA

For the first time in more than two years a glimmer of hope for the peace process in the Middle East opened up yesterday at President George W. Bush's summit in Jordan.

Standing on either side of Bush, the Israeli and Palestinian Prime Ministers, Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, pledged to implement the "roadmap" peace plan that calls for an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

"The Holy Land must be shared between the state of Palestine and the state of Israel, living at peace with each other and with every nation of the Middle East," said Bush.

Both Sharon and Abbas publicly committed themselves to that vision and shook hands.

Abbas repeated his promise of an end to violence and terrorism. Sharon promised a "viable Palestinian state" and the dismantling of some illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank. That was the glimmer of hope.

But the odds remain stacked against the peace process. Sharon and Abbas said little they have not said before and there was plenty missing from what they did say.

But they stood side by side and pledged themselves to peace under the unforgiving desert sun, and that alone was an achievement.

The road ahead will be far more difficult.

That was made clear when the most powerful Palestinian militant group, Hamas, rejected Abbas' call for the militants to abandon violence, and 40,000 Jewish settlers demonstrated against Sharon in Jerusalem.

There were plenty of reminders, too, on the Red Sea coast here, where the shores are littered with the memories of failed Middle East peace initiatives. Taba, where the Oslo peace process backed by Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, unravelled, is only a few kilometres up the coast.

The peace negotiations back then were far further advanced than yesterday's talks could hope to be.

Bush announced yesterday that he was sending a new monitoring team under John Wolf, an Under-Secretary of State, to ensure both sides honour their obligations.

There was no doubt whose achievement that small victory was: it belonged to a man who once seemed the least likely United States President to deliver peace to the people of the Middle East.

As Sharon and Abbas leaned towards each other to shake hands, Bush could be heard over the microphones saying "good job".

And they would not have been standing here together were it not for Bush's victory in Iraq, a victory that has the Arab regimes desperately moving to cling to power and reluctant to stand in Bush's way, and that has given Bush the authority at home to dictate terms to the Israelis.

It could all unravel easily enough. Bush is following uncannily closely in the footsteps of his father, who tried to push the Israelis into a peace deal on the back of an overwhelming victory against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, only to lose an election.

The stakes for the Israelis and Palestinians, after 2 1/2 years of bloodshed that have cost thousands of lives, are far higher.

Despite Bush's assurance that the Holy Land must be shared, the issue most conspicuously missing from yesterday's statements was how it will be divided.

It is quite clear that the Israelis and the Palestinians have very different ideas of how much land a future Palestinian state will have.

The Palestinians want all of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem. The Israelis want them to have far less: just the main Palestinian cities and population centres.

The issue loomed when Bush repeated his warning of the day before, in Sharm el-Sheikh, that "the issue of settlements must be addressed for peace to be achieved". And despite the excitement over Sharon's pledge on settlements yesterday, he did not fully address it.

He promised only to remove "unauthorised outposts". These are collections of caravans set up to seize the hilltops of the West Bank by extremist settlers.

They are far easier for Sharon to dismantle than the official settlements, which are fully fledged towns.

The signs are that Sharon is gearing up to offer a state that falls far short of Palestinians' expectations.



It is no secret that his aim is to hold on to as much land and as many settlements as he can. That means the negotiations ahead will be tough.

But, as King Abdullah of Jordan, the host of yesterday's summit, told Sharon and Abbas: "It's not only your people who will be watching and waiting. The eyes of the entire world will be upon you."

It would be an exaggeration to say there was optimism in Aqaba. But there was a little hope.

- INDEPENDENT