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| By Israel Insider staff and partners February 22, 2006 |
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| US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit talk during a press conference after their meeting in Cairo, Egypt Tuesday. (AP) |
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice must try to reconcile dissonant elements of the Bush administration policy in the Middle East this week - defending the push for Palestinian elections won by proclaimed terrorists while appealing for help from the kind of autocratic regimes she says have had their day.
Rice, who arrived here Tuesday afternoon, wants Egypt and Saudi Arabia to pressure the new Hamas leadership in the Palestinian territories to moderate its policies, the main message of two days of mostly closed-door diplomacy in Cairo and Riyadh.
She also wants those long-standing, largely autocratic governments to help isolate and financially strangle Hamas if the militant group will not accept Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and agree to honor agreements made by the previous, moderate Palestinian leadership.
The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Rice is making her first trip to the region since the surprise Hamas victory in Palestinian elections last month, and does not plan to see any Palestinian officials.
The U.S.-backed goal of peaceful coexistence for Israel and the Palestinians and an eventual independent state of Palestine would be set back by years, perhaps decades, by the prolonged leadership of an unrepentant Hamas.
"I hope Hamas makes the right choice," Rice said in a round-table interview with Arab journalists last week. "Nothing would be better than to have Hamas make the right choice, because if you had all of the entities of the Palestinian people united in the renunciation of violence, disarming of militias, the acceptance of Israel's right to exist, I believe you could move the peace process along really very rapidly."
Rice insisted she has no regrets about supporting Palestinian elections, despite the outcome, and took a historian's long view that democratic forces in the Middle East might produce upheaval before they produce peace.
"The idea that somehow, it is better for people to lack the means and the chance to express themselves, that it's better to support that and to, therefore, support dictatorship or oppression or authoritarianism where people don't have a voice - it's, I think, morally reprehensible," Rice said. "People have to have a way to express themselves or, if they don't have a legitimate way to express themselves, they express themselves through extremism."
There is suffrage and expanding political opposition in Egypt, but almost none in the family dynasty of Saudi Arabia.
Besides setting strategy on Hamas, Rice is appealing for continued Arab support as the United States moves toward a showdown with Iran in the United Nations Security Council.
Rice praised Egypt last week for telling Hamas that it must change, and she muted criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's move to postpone new municipal elections.
"Of course we were disappointed," Rice said last week, "and the message that I will take to Egypt is that Egypt needs to stay on democratic course. It needs to keep pushing ahead on the democratic course."
The Bush administration, and Rice in particular, have been far more critical of other recent democratic setbacks in Egypt. Rice canceled her first planned trip there last year in a dispute over the jailing of an opposition figure.
Her pressure on Egypt met with harsh criticism in Cairo newspapers Tuesday.
"What does Dr. Condoleezza Rice want from Egypt? Why does she ignite Egyptians' anger every time she visits Cairo? Is it a prudent diplomacy to attack a country before she visits it," wrote Mohammed el-Shabah, editor of the independent Nahdat Masr newspaper.
"Every time Condoleezza Rice travels to the area she fires off statements, warnings and insinuations about democracy in the region," wrote Abdellah Nassar a commentator for the government owned Al Gomhoria newspaper. "Egypt is capable of running its affairs. It does not need a mandate or preconditions."
At Tuesday's press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Rice was asked whether the United States intended to impose a "democracy of torture" and human rights abuses. That, the reporter suggested, is what the United States has wrought in Iraq.
Others wanted to know why the United States is focused only on Iran's nuclear ambitions instead of on the nuclear weapons held by Israel, and whether the Bush administration might bomb Iran.
"Our aspiration is not that people will have an American-style democracy. American-style democracy is for Americans," Rice said. "But that there will be a democracy that is for Egypt or for Iraq or for any other people on this Earth, because democracy is the only form of government in which human beings truly get to express themselves."
Also Tuesday, Gheit said it is premature to cut off international aid for a Palestinian government even if Hamas is at its helm, dashing the Bush administration's hopes for an immediate, unified front against the militant Islamic group.
"We should give Hamas time," Gheit said. "I'm sure that Hamas will develop, will evolve. We should not prejudge the issue."
Egypt is a crucial player in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, as the first Arab state to make peace with Israel. Senior Egyptian politicians and government officials may be the rest of the world's most effective ambassadors to Hamas, as Rice is well aware.
"The Egyptians are having those discussions and, I think, doing very good work to try and convince Hamas that there is an international consensus to which now, Hamas must respond," Rice said in the interview.
Delivering that message, Rice said, is the only reason for anyone to talk to Hamas.
That will be a tough sell in Saudi Arabia, where unofficial fundraising has sent millions to charity groups affiliated with or fronting for Hamas and other militant Middle East organizations.
The United States has already begun to sever financial ties to the Palestinian Authority, and Israel says it will stop handing over about $55 million a month in taxes and duties it collects on the Palestinians' behalf.
AP contributed to this report.
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