WASHINGTON – With the Mideast peace process stalled and U.S.-Israeli relations in crisis, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed Wednesday to a Mideast strategy meeting of top international diplomats.
As originally conceived, the meeting in Moscow of the so-called Quartet group of peacemakers — the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — was intended to lend support for the start this week of indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But those talks fell apart before they began — a casualty of Israel's provocative approval of new housing in east Jerusalem.
The diplomatic crisis erupted last Tuesday when Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for a future capital. Clinton called the announcement an insult and "a deeply negative signal" for the peace process; she even questioned Israel's commitment to its relationship with the U.S.
Clinton also will use her Moscow visit to discuss another high foreign policy priority of the Obama administration: arms control. The U.S. and Russia are said to be close to concluding a follow to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December, but the final bargaining has been rocky.
William Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, told reporters traveling with Clinton that her visit to Moscow was an important opportunity to advance the arms talks, but does not necessarily mean an agreement is imminent.
"We are getting closer," Burns said, but he added he could not estimate how much longer it would take to settle the remaining issues. He declined to identify the specific sticking points.
The agreement is expected to reduce each side's long-range nuclear weapons by about one-quarter from levels set in a 2002 treaty that superseded the earlier START pact. The newer treaty did not include an extension of agreed measures to verify each side's compliance. The current negotiations include verification measures that would replace those in the 1991 deal, which expired last December.
The Quartet group is to meet over dinner Thursday, followed by formal talks on Friday. Joining Clinton will be Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, and the Quartet's special representative, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The group is meant to represent an international consensus on the importance of pressing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and a commitment to establishing a Palestinian state as part of that process.
Michele D. Dunne, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Tuesday that the Quartet might back U.S.-initiated demands of Israel, including that it reverse the east Jerusalem housing decision and make a gesture to the Palestinians. But she saw little chance of it working.
"To say that you have to rescind approval for this construction in east Jerusalem is very unusual — very unusual for the United States to go that far," she said. "And I don't think Netanyahu will do it." She was referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to visit Washington next week.
In an op-ed published Thursday in The New York Times, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren reasserted his country's opposition to any restrictions on building in east Jerusalem. But he denied that U.S.-Israel relations were "at a historic low point" because of the disagreement.
"Because we share fundamental values — democracy, respect for individual rights and the rule of law — our friendship can sustain occasional disagreements, and remain unassailably solid," Oren wrote.
In remarks at the State Department on Tuesday, Clinton spoke hopefully of getting the peace talks back on track.
"There is just too much at stake for both the Palestinians and the Israelis," for them not to resume bargaining, she said. Negotiations broke off in late 2008 with Israel's incursion into Hamas-ruled Gaza.
George Mitchell, the Obama administration's special envoy for Mideast peace, was supposed to have been shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians this week, prior to joining Clinton in Moscow on Thursday. But he canceled his Mideast visit as the administration awaited word from Netanyahu on whether he would reverse last week's housing decision and take other steps to reassure Washington and the Palestinians
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