Opinion | Editorials
Rice comes with false promises
What does US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expect to achieve by returning to the Middle East? We knew she would achieve nothing, and that is exactly what she did achieve.
- Published: 00:00 July 30, 2006
What does US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expect to achieve by returning to the Middle East? Seven days ago she visited Israel, Lebanon and Gaza, despite being told by us to go home. We knew she would achieve nothing, and that is exactly what she did achieve.
So, having gone on to the Asean conference, she is now asked to call in on the Middle East on her way back to the US.
Her purpose, allegedly, is to put forward new proposals conceived by the US and UK over how to restore peace. Their often-repeated aim is to gain a "credible and lasting ceasefire". Anything else, we are assured by Rice, would be giving "false promises".
Yet what promises or proposals will Rice bear this time that she could not deliver a week ago? What has changed so dramatically that it needs her urgent presence in the Middle East, when she so abjectly failed before? Could it be that Israel, realising it has taken on more than it can effectively handle alone, has applied pressure on the US to try and get it out of its quagmire?
Likely so. Likely, also that Israel no longer wants to wage war against the US-perceived "terrorist nations" of Syria and Iran.
There also, Israel is beginning to accept it no longer has the capability or desire to act as substitute for the US in its "war on terrorism" in the Middle East.
Rice will return to the region with little appetite for acting as mediator in such wrangles.
The US and UK claim they want to get to the root of the problem to solve the current crisis, but ignore that the cause is not the capture of some Israeli soldiers and prisoner swap, but Israeli presence on Arab lands.
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