Obama administration missteps hamper Mideast efforts - washingtonpost.com

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By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 5, 2009

President Obama came into office insisting that his administration would press hard and fast to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But after nine months, analysts and diplomats say, the administration's efforts have faltered in part because of its own missteps.

As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear during her Middle East trip, which ended Wednesday, U.S. officials are now promoting new tactics -- what they called the "baby steps" of lower-level talks -- to bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for direct talks.

But the dynamics have changed since Obama named a special envoy to the region on his second day in office and tried to make a fresh start. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whom the administration once would have been happy to see undermined, has been strengthened -- while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom the administration had hoped to bolster, has been weakened.

"There was an excess of zeal at first," said Edward S. Walker Jr., who was assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the Clinton administration. "It is a noble endeavor to try to hammer out peace. But you have to look at the relationships. You have to read the players. They got out in front of studying the problem and were anxious to show progress."

Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration's efforts in recent days as "amateur night at the Apollo Theater." He said the administration did not game out the consequences of its demands on the parties -- and then flinched. "They just dug deeper and deeper their own grave," he said. "All of this talk of negotiations doesn't cut the mustard in the region."

To be sure, Mideast diplomacy is always difficult; it is especially so when the Israeli government leans to the right and the Palestinian government is deeply split between a secular party in the West Bank and an Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. A solution to end the conflict has eluded U.S. administrations for decades -- and President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for largely ignoring the problem until his final months in office.

Ghaith al-Omari, a former Abbas aide who is advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine, said, "The situation is so complicated that no matter what approach the administration would have taken would have led to difficulties." He said that things have improved in the past nine months, including getting a reluctant Israeli government to embrace the idea of talks. Negotiations will begin eventually, he said, because the Obama administration has signaled that it will not waver in pursuit of direct talks.

U.S. officials also insist that much progress has been made behind the scenes and that the administration remains undaunted in the face of current obstacles.

"I am not someone who is in any way affected by difficulty, who is living in a world apart from the real world in which we inhabit, where it takes just an enormous amount of effort to get to where we are headed," Clinton said in Cairo. "The two-state solution is one of the most difficult."

The administration's key error, many analysts say, was to insist that Israel immediately freeze all settlement growth in Palestinian-occupied territories. The United States has never accepted the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, but the Obama administration took an unusually tough stance. It refused to acknowledge an unwritten agreement between Israel and Bush to limit growth in settlements, with Clinton leading the charge to demand a full settlement freeze.

U.S. officials say that in the wake of the war in the Gaza Strip in the winter, they wanted to send a signal of toughness and push both sides to take positive steps to build an atmosphere for talks. By that measure, there has been some progress: Israelis and Palestinians have been deep in conversations trying to set the parameters for negotiations.

But Abbas, emboldened by the U.S. rhetoric, announced that he would not begin negotiations until settlements were frozen. Facing Israeli opposition, the administration appeared to back off the demand for a full settlement freeze, first exempting East Jerusalem and then signaling approval of an Israeli plan to exempt nearly 3,000 housing units on the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Abbas got into political trouble at home when he succumbed to U.S. pressure to delay U.N. consideration of a report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza; he later reversed himself. When Clinton met him Saturday and pressed him to accept the limited Israeli settlement plan as a basis for talks, he refused.

Hours later, Clinton met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem and pronounced the Israeli offer "unprecedented" -- sparking Arab outrage, which she spent the next several days trying to dampen. She extended her trip to include a stop in Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to explain the U.S. position.

"Our policy on settlements has not changed," Clinton insisted Wednesday. The Israeli proposal "is not what we prefer," she said, "because we would like to see everything ended forever. But it is something that shows at least a positive movement."

Elliott Abrams, a former White House aide who helped negotiate the unwritten agreement on settlements in the Bush years, said there is little difference between that agreement and what Clinton claimed as unprecedented. "It really is the same deal that presumably could have been had on January 20," he said.

Instead of demanding an unrealistic freeze, Abrams said, the administration could have made the Bush deal public, noted that Israel had not consistently lived up to it and declared that it would now be enforced. "Instead, we had nine months of nonsense," he said. "Palestinians and Israelis are not sure what the United States stands for."

Administration officials dispute that critique, saying the Israeli offer actually holds the key to a real settlement freeze. If negotiations progress, Israel would come under fierce pressure not to lift the moratorium after it ends in nine to 12 months. So, once the grandfathered units have been completed, officials said, construction would end -- and a real settlement freeze would be in place.

Such nuances are lost now in the sands of Middle East rhetoric. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, mused Wednesday about the end of the dream of a Palestinian state and scoffed at the Obama administration's notion of baby steps to talks. "As to the baby steps, we begun taking them in 1990-1991, and we have been crawling for 19 years," he said. "We need youthful steps to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Cairo and correspondent Samuel Sockol in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

U.N. General Assembly, OAS Back Honduran Zelaya

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Scrambling to hold on to his presidency, deposed Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya pleaded his case in the United States yesterday, winning a rare unanimous vote of support from the U.N. General Assembly but failing to get an audience with top Obama administration officials.

Zelaya also gained crucial support at the Organization of American States, whose members debated into the night on launching a diplomatic initiative to resolve the crisis. They were also considering calling on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank to cut off all loans to the Honduran government.

In New York, Zelaya told the General Assembly that Honduras was "reverting to the age of dictatorship. Repression has now been established in the country."

After the meeting, he vowed to return to Honduras on Thursday with a delegation of dignitaries, including the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador, the secretary general of the OAS and the president of the General Assembly.

Diplomats last night tried to persuade Zelaya not to make the trip. Some analysts worried that the crisis could be escalating.

"If he [Zelaya] goes back with no one laying the groundwork . . . it's going to be a huge clash," said Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center's Americas program, who attended an urgent OAS general assembly last night on the matter.

Zelaya was detained by soldiers Sunday morning and expelled from the country. A close ally of populist President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Zelaya had clashed with the Honduran Congress, the military and the Supreme Court over his plans for a referendum that many alleged was an effort to change the constitution in order to gain another term as president.

The U.S. government continues to recognize Zelaya as president, rather than a replacement sworn in by the Honduran Congress, Roberto Micheletti. But the Obama administration did not grant Zelaya a high-level meeting at the White House or State Department.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton could not meet with Zelaya because she was away from work recuperating from a fractured elbow. "This is just something that came up today," he said of the Honduran's decision to fly to Washington.

But the low-key treatment of Zelaya appeared to reflect an effort by the Obama administration to preserve some room for diplomatic maneuver. The U.S. government is working with regional leaders to resolve the crisis, but it has outsize influence with the Honduran elite because of its close military ties and its economic clout.

Zelaya was expected to meet with the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., and the top Latin America official on the National Security Council, Dan Restrepo, during his stay in Washington.

If Zelaya felt slighted, he didn't show it. Asked about allegations from some leftist politicians that the United States favored the coup, he said: "I have listened to President Obama. It is not only that he condemns the event, but he has demanded the restoration of the president. I have also heard the ambassador of the U.S. in Tegucigalpa. He has taken the same position against the coup powers."

The U.N. General Assembly unanimously condemned the coup yesterday afternoon and demanded the "immediate and unconditional restoration of the legitimate and constitutional government" of Zelaya.

The action, while not legally binding, provided a show of unity at the United Nations in responding to an international crisis, bringing the United States together with stridently anti-American governments in Latin America such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Zelaya took to the General Assembly podium to condemn the coup as an act of "barbarity" by a "small group of usurpers."

In a lengthy address, he portrayed himself as a champion of the poor who had been brought down by a clique of conservative military and economic elites who resented his attempts to improve the living standards for impoverished Hondurans.

He denied allegations that he had prepared the referendum to pave the way for another run for president, saying he planned to step down after his mandate ends in January.

He added that the new government's allegation that he had engaged in wrongdoing was unfounded. "I have been accused of being a populist. I've been accused of being a communist," he said, but added that he had not had an opportunity to defend himself.

"Nobody has told me what my crime is, what my error is," he said.

Zelaya presented a detailed account of the army raid on his home, saying he had been rousted from his sleep by gunfire and confronted by soldiers as he sought to alert a local reporter and others on his cellphone.

Lynch reported from the United Nations.

U.S. Condemns Coup in Honduras but Makes No Firm Demands

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

Clinton's statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the situation presented a dilemma for the United States and other countries. Zelaya is "fighting with all the institutions in the country," Hakim said. "He's in no condition really to govern. At the same time, to stand by and allow him to be pushed out by the military reverses a course of 20 years."

U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sheltered one of Zelaya's children to prevent him from being harmed, according to Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the Organization of American States.

But the Obama administration has had cool relations with Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chávez. While U.S. officials say they continue to recognize Zelaya as president, they have not indicated they are willing to use the enormous U.S. clout in the country to force his return.

Asked whether it was a U.S. priority to see Zelaya reinstalled, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."

John D. Negroponte, a former senior State Department official and ambassador to Honduras, said Clinton's remarks appeared to reflect U.S. reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.

"I think she wants to preserve some leverage to try and get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum," he said.

Zelaya clashed with the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military in recent weeks, particularly over his promotion of a referendum that might have permitted him to run for another four-year term. The Congress and Supreme Court said the referendum was illegal.

The Congress overwhelmingly voted to depose Zelaya after he had been forcibly removed. Lawmakers then named a new president, Roberto Micheletti, from the same party.

Obama repeated yesterday that the United States viewed Zelaya as Honduras's president and that "the coup was not legal."

"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," he told reporters after a meeting with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Clinton told reporters that the situation in Honduras had "evolved into a coup" but that the United States was "withholding any formal legal determination" characterizing it that way.

"We're assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be," she said. "Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome."

The Obama administration has pledged to work more closely with Latin America and not dictate policy in its traditional back yard. But the United States has several points of leverage: It is Honduras's biggest trading partner, and President Obama has requested $68 million in development and military aid for 2010. Portions of that aid, which are provided directly to the government, would be cut off in the event of a coup. Congressional officials said last night they were not sure exactly how much that amounted to. Honduras also is a recipient of a five-year, $215 million Millennium Challenge grant that is conditioned on the country remaining a democracy.

The United States also has a close military relationship with Honduras. Hundreds of Honduran officers participate in U.S. military training programs each year, more than most other Western Hemisphere countries.

Among those who have attended such training is the senior military officer of Honduras, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who was dismissed by Zelaya prior to the coup. After that dismissal, other senior Honduran military leaders resigned, including the Air Force commander, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Vasquez attended the Pentagon-run School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, and Suazo attended in 1996, according to Army records of graduates obtained by a watchdog group. A spokesman for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which replaced the School of the Americas in 2001, said the records of graduates obtained by the group, School of Americas Watch, are accurate.

"We have a strong military relationship with them and in . . . military exchange training that takes place, we emphasize civilian control of the military" as well as human rights and the rule of law, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

A contingent of about 600 U.S. military personnel is based at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force Bravo, which mainly supports disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.

The Organization of American States has summoned the hemisphere's foreign ministers to Washington to discuss the crisis. Clinton said the United States is pushing for a delegation to be sent to Honduras after the session.

The United States has been a strong backer of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document signed by OAS members in 2001 that commits them to observe the "right to democracy." Violators can be suspended from the organization.

OAS members issued a statement calling for "the immediate, safe and unconditional return" of Zelaya to the presidency.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.