Mid-East peace plan not on backburner

A US initiative to foster social and economic reform in Arab nations will not sideline the Middle East peace process, a senior Washington official said on Friday.

“Nobody should believe that our idea to support reform in the Middle East is a substitute for work on the Middle East peace process,” said US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman.

His statement came amid growing concerns in Europe that America’s focus on resolving the Middle East conflict may take second place to the election fever surrounding Washington’s November poll.

EU envoy to the Middle East Marc Otte stressed in a recent interview with this website that “these concerns are real”.

“They are justified by the fact that an administration, a president who is looking to be re-elected does not want to add to his problems.”

Washington mooted its “Wider Middle East” initiative in December with a view to promoting social, economic and political reform across the Arab world, bringing it under a Western security umbrella.

But following a visit to NATO headquarters where he had briefed ambassadors on America’s initiative, Grossman also told reporters that the US was not prepared to wait until “complete peace” in the region before pushing for social and economic reforms.

He said that while reform “was not a substitute” for the peace process, failure to resolve the conflict “was not an excuse for doing nothing.”

Grossman's words betray a fundamental difference in the approach taken by both sides of the Atlantic.

The EU is currently thrashing out a Middle East strategy, which will be at the centre of talks with the US at a Dublin Summit in June.

The position of the peace process in future plans for the region remains the “largest difference” between the EU and US approaches, said one Brussels official.

While the Trans-Atlantic partnership appears to be united on key points, including the need for reform to come from within, the EU has put a stronger emphasis on the resolution of the Middle East conflict to be central to any new strategy.

Meanwhile NATO is forming its own parallel strategy to increase its political role in the region, which will be presented a June Istanbul summit.

While admitting that there was no consensus yet on NATO’s role in the Trans-Atlantic greater Middle East plans, Grossman said there was no reason why the military alliance could not use its experience in helping countries in the region to deal with security issues.

Assistance in earthquakes, border security and combating the trafficking of persons, narcotics and weapons of mass destruction, were all roles that NATO could feasibly play, he said.

• Previous article
• Next article