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Hillary Clinton - Source: Reuters -
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought her flagging
effort to revive Middle East peace talks to Cairo with little sign
that her round of diplomacy has helped break the impasse.
After four days of talks with Israeli, Palestinian and Arab
leaders, a senior US official said Washington was assessing whether
its drive to persuade Israel and the Palestinians to resume
negotiations had any chance of success and might consider
alternatives if the answer was no.
Clinton was expected to meet President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday
on the last leg of her tour, during which Arab anger has flared
over signs the Obama administration no longer backs Palestinian
demands that Israel immediately stop building settlements on
occupied territory in the West Bank.
Clinton has tried to allay those fears. However, a trip intended to
give new momentum to the peace effort has instead caused many
analysts to ask whether it had dealt it a setback.
With no sign of movement on the important issues, State Department
spokesman PJ Crowley was asked if the United States might consider
setting out its own take-it-or-leave-it framework for a peace
deal.
"There has been some progress but clearly at this point not
enough," Crowley told reporters on Clinton's plane from Morocco,
where she had been attending a development forum and had a series
of meetings with Middle East leaders.
"Based on these discussions, we'll say 'is there potential in this
current structure or do we need to look at alternatives?' They are
available," he said.
Restraint call
US President Barack Obama has eased pressure on Israel over
settlements, calling for restraint in construction where he had
earlier pushed for a freeze.
The change has angered Palestinians who say it has killed any
hope of reviving peace talks soon.
Clinton underscored this shift in emphasis in Jerusalem on Saturday
when she hailed Netanyahu's offer on settlement restraint as
unprecedented and urged the Palestinians to drop their precondition
for talks without making any similar specific demands of the
Israeli side.
Clinton's visit to Egypt followed a two-day stop in Morocco where
she urged Arab foreign ministers to put aside recriminations and
support moves to resume the talks, suspended since December.
She held a 15-minute meeting with Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa
Koussa, her first talks with him since she took office in
January.
The two discussed bilateral relations and events in Sudan's
Darfur region.
Crowley said Clinton did not bring up the case of Lockerbie bomber
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, whose release from a Scottish prison in
August and subsequent triumphant return to Libya provoked an angry
reaction in the United States.
US envoy George Mitchell also arrived in Cairo on Tuesday and was
to brief Clinton on his latest round of talks in Israel and Jordan,
which included a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
in the Jordanian capital Amman, Crowley said.
She was due to meet Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and
intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been monitoring
Palestinian efforts to overcome their internal political
divisions.
