Rice scrambles to salvage Mideast peace initiative

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070218/pl_afp/mideastusdiplomacy_070218204211;_ylt=AkjcRKhM6Gyj8IK2v5sOuFrMWM0F

Rice scrambles to salvage Mideast peace initiative

by David Millikin 1 hour, 19 minutes ago

JERUSALEM (AFP) - US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice shuttled between Palestinian and Israeli leaders over the weekend to prepare for a three-way peace summit that has been overtaken by battles over a Palestinian unity government.

Rice said her talks Sunday with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister had been extensive, cordial and candid.

But she declined to go into detail of what would be discussed at Monday's meeting and sought to lower expectations of any breakthrough in reviving an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that has been frozen for years.

"This is not something that I expect to move along very quickly," she said.

"If you ask people to run at this point, I think somebody's going to fall down, and that's probably not a good thing."

[peacebird]

1. "If you ask people to run at this point, I think somebody's going to fall down, and that's probably

not a good thing".....


:spank: Doh! Ya think, Condi?

:grr:

Actually it's obvious you DON'T think Condi....

[smoogatz]

3. What the fuck is she even talking about?

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations...

[PerceptionManagement]

6. No joke. With her incompetence and well documented history of failure, why does she bother?

[smoogatz]

2. Has there ever been a more hapless, less effective Secretary of State?

Anybody know?

[cliss]

4. "Rice Scrambles?"

Is that like Scrambled Rice? Maybe with eggs? Or how about fried rice?

Why is it that this woman's name always has a feel of ridiculousness to it? I think the writers do it on purpose.

They know

She's

Ridiculous.

[C_U_L8R]

5. Whatever happened to Condi's presidential dream?

seems she pretty much fucked that one up
along with everthing else

[sam sarrha]

7. i doubt any of the Middle Eastern leaders would even let her in to talk..

[sam sarrha]

8. she has no staff.. all Negroponte can do is train Death Squads.. they know it too

[rwj]

9. My middle east peace plan

Just some thoughts of mine about the best way to middle east peace (my opinion) http://www.geocities.com/robjackson58/peaceplan.html

[cliss]

10. Hi, rwj and

welcome to the DU:smoke: Thanks for your post.

It's getting to be a little too late right now, but I'm going to bookmark your post & I'll take a look tomorrow.

[gratuitous]

11. There's a Mideast peace initiative?

Boy, go away for a weekend on retreat, and there's no telling what might happen.

So, how's that coming along, Ms. Part-Timer? Think you'll bring peace to the Middle East by the time your Manolos go on sale? No? Oh well, nobody was expecting very much anyway. Carry on.

[Javaman]

16. I thought the same thing...

Scrambling to save something usually means that something exists in the first place.

more smoke and mirror from the MSM.

[DemoTex]

12. Condi is doing one last lap of the M.E. before War on Iran.

Then Bu$hco and its enablers (MSM, etc) will say, "We tried diplomacy, and it failed." Then the Bu$hies will take us, again, into the jaws of the cat-o-death (war with Iran) and, again, fail. Never forget: Failure is their name, blame is their game.

[FarCenter]

13. "extensive, codial and candid" and "inconclusive"

Rice said her talks Sunday with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister had been extensive, cordial and candid.

From Deutsche Welle at http://www.dw-world.de/dw/function/0,2145,12215_pg_1,00.html

"Three-way talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have ended inconclusively in Jerusalem. After the meeting, Rice made a brief statement in which she said that Olmert and Abbas had agreed to meet again soon."

[FarCenter]

14. Will the EU recognize the new Palestinian government?

From the Financial Times at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c0390722-bf72-11db-9ac2-000b5df10621.html

"The international Quartet – the US, European Union, United Nations and Russia – has said a new government must accept its three principles. Some officials, in Europe and elsewhere, have nevertheless suggested they might settle for less than an explicit Hamas recognition of Israel, while Russia has proposed a lifting of the existing boycott."

[FarCenter]

15. Talk is cheap: Bush is pushing the Palestinians toward civil war

From The Daily Star at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=79631&categ_id=17

...

"This part of the world is intimately familiar with Washington's habit of seeking to impose double standards, and no one has been on the wrong end of such attempts more regularly than the Palestinians, but the Bush administration is breaking new ground in terms of duplicity and inconsistency. Not satisfied with having starved and intimidated a freely and fairly elected government into sharing power at home, the Americans are now trying to dictate the new government's foreign policy as well. Officially stated "respect" for previous interim peace accords signed with Israel, for example, is not enough: The Palestinians must vow to abide in perpetuity by the terms of the Oslo process. It does not matter to Bush that key items of Oslo have been altered (in Israel's favor) under US pressure, that the Jewish state has used the peace process to radically increase the number of colonists living in the West Bank, that it has militarily reoccupied the same piece of land, or that a then-Israeli prime minister has already declared the Oslo Accords "dead." Instead, the Palestinians are expected to follow the rules that their occupiers are paid to flout, to renounce the use of force against a well-armed enemy that frequently kills more children than combatants, and to promise full recognition of a state that refuses to so much as sign - let alone obey - the Geneva Convention on protecting civilians."

...