G8 SUMMIT: President Bush flew yesterday to Calgary in Canada to the summit of the Group of Eight leaders, ostensibly about aid to Africa, determined to overcome initial scepticism among allies about the thrust of his new Middle East initiative.
While even his closest allies welcome his detailed involvement they are wary about his call for the ousting of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat.
"We welcome the speech and the engagement it demonstrates from the US administration," the spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, told reporters. But he added: "We have always said it is for the Palestinian people to choose their own leader." The leaders of the US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, Italy and Russia will meet until tomorrow in the Canadian Rockies resort of Kananaskis.
Domestically, Mr Bush's speech has been broadly welcomed, particularly in Congress where a bipartisan majority has for some time urged outright support for Israel.
"The President's plan puts the burden where it belongs: on the Palestinians, to end terrorism, to reform fundamentally the Palestinian Authority and to allow new leadership," said Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The sooner they act, the sooner there will be a final settlement that includes a Palestinian state and security for Israel."
The Senate's Democratic Majority Leader, Mr Tom Daschle, offered what sounded like a back-handed compliment, commending Mr Bush "on a clear and powerful statement of American principles, principles that a number of us have been articulating for several months."
That sense of the speech as one that aligned the US firmly with Israel was reflected in the analysis of the Washington Post, which described the initiative as "a purposeful abandonment of neutrality by the Administration, which now has largely adopted the stance of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Arafat is no longer relevant to the peace process, and that security and political reform must precede negotiations about a Palestinian state."
The former Senate Majority Leader, Mr George Mitchell, who headed the commission that developed the peacemaking plan the Administration has been following, warned replacement of Mr Arafat could backfire. "There's a risk that someone from Hamas or Islamic Jihad could succeed Mr Arafat, which would make it much, much worse than the current situation," he told NBC.
"If this is interpreted to mean the Palestinians must do everything that they have been asked to do before the Israelis do anything they have been asked to do then I think it's very likely not going to move an inch forward," Mr Mitchell said.
The Administration's most dove-like member, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, made himself available for several strategically placed interviews to endorse the removal of Mr Arafat - although Administration sources hinted at the willingness to see him stay on as a purely figurehead president.
"I told him \ the direction in which they were moving had to change in a very fundamental and strategic way, and we had to see that if he wanted the United States to be a partner in this moving forward," Mr Powell told the New York Times. "To be blunt, we haven't seen enough of that."
The internal debate had seen Mr Powell and the State Department's Middle East experts against the camps of Vice-President Dick Cheney and the Defence Secretary, Mr Don Rumsfeld, who were less willing to get involved in the conflict and more inclined to support Israel uncritically. But in recent weeks one senior administration official told the New York Times, a strong consensus emerged on the need for change and reform of the Palestinian leadership.
Mr Powell said he expected to travel to the region for consultations soon. He said a planned ministerial conference on Middle East peace "has to wait, I think . . . It's hard to conceive of circumstances in which we should be having a meeting in the next few weeks." He went out of his way to emphasise the demands being made on the Israelis.
Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states which have peace treaties with Israel, welcomed Mr Bush's address. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, however, remarked that he "cannot find in the statement anything that necessitates firing" Mr Arafat, who was not specifically named by Mr Bush. Jordan's government said it hoped that the address would lead to the ending of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Arab League Secretary General, Mr Amr Mousa, stated that Mr Bush's words deserved careful consideration.
Cairo's semi-official Al-Ahram daily said Egypt was "studying with great interest" Mr Bush's ideas and would respond after consulting the Palestinian Authority and Arab states. But Jordan's mainstream daily ad-Dustour said Bush's speech was a "disappointment" and would exacerbate tensions in the region. "It doesn't set a mechanism on how to implement the proposals or the ideas that Mr Bush put forward," an Egyptian official asserted.
