Top Envoy Cites Iran Threat Before Peace Talks

WASHINGTON (Aug. 31) -- The latest peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may be most noticeable for who won't be there but will be on everyone's mind: Iran.

The nuclear wannabe nation poses what Israel considers an existential threat more dangerous than the long-simmering conflict with the Palestinians. And on the eve of new direct negotiations, Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell said the Tehran regime is "obviously an issue of high importance, not just to Israel and the United States but to all of the countries in the region and indeed around the world."

To underscore how far Iran has risen on the list of worries in the region, the former senator from Maine recalled a report he wrote about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2001. Rereading it recently, he said he was struck to find "no reference to Iran." Yet as he shuttled in the last year to more than a dozen countries in the region, "without exception Iran was included in the conversation. And in most of them, it was the first or second item mentioned."

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a think tank here, said unlike previous, more narrowly focused Middle East talks, "in Barack Obama's mind the issue of broader regional stability is absolutely linked."

"One of the animating features is the hope that something can take hold that moves it out of the limitation of being seen as just the Israelis and Palestinians. This is about something much, much larger and why in fact President Obama keeps jumping into this swamp and trying to generate something of it," Clemons said.

On the eve of the talks, a Palestinian gunman killed four Israelis near the volatile West Bank city of Hebron. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned the "horrendous terrorist attack against innocent civilians," but said it did not undermine Israel's commitment to the peace process.

"We want a peace agreement. We're here because we want to move the process forward," Regev said. "We know there are challenges. We know that many people are skeptical. Our challenge is to prove the skeptics wrong."

But, he said, the attack "underscores the importance that any peace agreement contain ironclad arrangements to maintain security. There is no peace without security."

In remarks to the media before the shootings, and embargoed for release tonight, Mitchell outlined the schedule for the next two days:

Wednesday: Obama holds one-on-one meetings with Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Jordan's King Abdullah. Obama will make a statement after the private sessions. The leaders will join the president for public remarks before they head into the White House for a kick-off dinner that will include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Thursday: Clinton brings the Israeli and Palestinian delegations together at her offices to begin work to hammer out the specifics on where and when to meet next. Negotiations are likely to begin in earnest in the second week of September, probably in Egypt. Netanyahu has said he hoped to meet Abbas every two weeks after that. Mitchell called that "a sensible approach, which we hope is undertaken," along with lower-level meetings.

"The United States will play an active and sustained role in the process," Mitchell said. "That does not mean that the United States must be physically represented in every single meeting. ... On the other hand, it does not mean that the United States will simply stand aside and not participate actively. We will operate in a manner that is reasonable and sensible in the circumstances which exist."

Mitchell noted that Obama "has been engaged personally from the very beginning" in bringing the two sides together, including calling Middle Eastern leaders within his first 24 hours as president and appointing him as special envoy the next day. He cautioned against equating a lack of "public activities" with Obama's level of engagement.

"I'm certain that what the president will do will [be to] make a judgment based upon the circumstances at the time, the reasonableness and the necessity of his participation, and will continue to be fully and actively a participant in the process, as necessary," Mitchell said. "He has many, many important obligations, but he places a high priority on comprehensive peace in the Middle East."

Daniel Levy, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, said the big question is whether the hard-line Netanyahu is a latter-day Mikhail Gorbachev who will pull a Richard Nixon to China move to bring peace -- or a Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli leader who once said he wanted to drag out peace talks for a decade to give Jewish settlers more time to expand settlements in occupied territories.

"There might be an Israeli 'yes' to getting this done trying to find its way out," Levy said. "But that Israeli 'yes' won't come out on its own, but we're going to have to perform a C-section in order to get it out and the only surgeon available to perform that C-section is the Obama administration."

Mitchell, who spent five years shepherding a peace deal in Northern Ireland, answered critics who charge a double standard from the man who included Sinn Fein, the political wing of the militant Irish Republican Army, in negotiations but has shut Hamas out of these talks.

"We welcome the full participation by Hamas and all relevant parties once they comply with the basic requirements of democracy and nonviolence that are, of course, a prerequisite to engage in these serious types of discussions," Mitchell said.

The Islamic group has rejected the talks as a way to legitimate the Jewish state, which it does not recognize.

Mitchell explained that Sinn Fein did not enter negotiations until 15 months had elapsed and only when it agreed to what came to be known as the Mitchell Principles. Those called for a ceasefire, denouncing the use of violence and agreeing to abide by the terms of a final agreement.

While the two conflicts are "not identical and not directly comparable," Mitchell made clear the United States would hold Hamas to the same standards.

"If there is movement to accept those principles, as occurred with Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland, why then, of course, they would be welcome. And we would want them to participate in those circumstances," he said.

Asked about the one-year deadline set on this latest round, which follows a long line of meetings that includes the road map to peace, agreements in Madrid and Oslo, and talks from one side of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay to the other, Mitchell turned philosophical.

"People ask whether the long history of negotiation has been beneficial or harmful. It's actually been both," he said. "Beneficial in the sense that this has been discussed so often that people have a good sense of what the principal issues are and how they might be resolved; harmful in the sense that it's created attitudes among many in the region that it's a never-ending process, that it's gone on for a very long time and will go on forever.

"So it's very important to create a sense that this has a definite concluding point. And we believe that it can be done and we will do everything possible, with perseverance and patience and determination, to see that it is done."