Nobody even knows who is coming yet. Nothing has been worked out in advance.
This is turning out to be a show for the Arab allies to convince them that Bush is serious about resolving the Palestinian situation. But apparently not serious enough to do his homework or line up any kind of agenda or framework ahead of time. I guess optimism is enough.
And the Palestinian Authority may not even attend. Israel is making "gestures", but there's no way they are going to allow the Palestinians to be an independent state, and even less chance of any part of the Golan Heights being returned to Syria. It's all on Israel, with Olmert at low single digits in domestic popularity polls. I guess Bush is hoping that all of the Arab states will just smile and fold.
We're reduced to hoping for a miracle, which is Bush's main strategy on pretty much everything these days.
If a fistfist doesn't break out, it will probably be considered a success.
40 Countries Invited to Annapolis--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(IsraelNN.com) 40 countries, among them Syria and Saudi Arabia, have received invitations to attend the Annapolis conference. Foreign ministers from Arab League nations will meet on Thursday to discuss whether or not to attend the conference, and under what conditions. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has said that the PA will not attend the conference if representatives from the Arab League are not present.
Abbas has repeatedly expressed ambivalence towards the conference and has threatened not to attend without a promise from Israel to establish a PA state within a certain time frame. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made several "good-will gestures" in an effort to placate the PA, including a decision earlier this week to release 431 terrorist prisoners and to allow Russia to supply the PA with armored vehicles and 1,000 guns.
Blair arrived in the Saudi capital after leaving Egypt on Wednesday, and was planning to hold talks in Riyadh with King Abdullah in efforts to persuade Arab states to attend the Annapolis peace conference next week, government sources reported.---------------------------------------------------------
"He was in Cairo with Mubarak ... he is trying to pull together a better picture from the Quartet's perspective of who's going to be in attendance," a European diplomat said.
"Whether it will have an impact on the Saudi position is debatable," he added.
The United States is inviting 49 countries, groups of nations, financial institutions and individuals to Annapolis.
Israel and the Palestinians received their invitations Tuesday, and the U.S. State Department said embassies elsewhere were notifying the others, asking them to send their foreign ministers or other appropriate officials to the event, aimed at relaunching negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Palestinian and Egyptian sources said Tuesday that Syria and Saudi Arabia would attend the U.S.-hosted meet.
Syria and Saudi Arabia are expected to announce their level of representation at the conference within a few days, following the Arab foreign ministers' meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Friday.
Observers believe that Syria will try to take advantage of the Annapolis summit in order to strengthen its hand internationally. "Syria will not refuse an American invitation," said a Palestinian source in Cairo. Mubarak, after meeting with Olmert on Tuesday, also said that he expects Syria to attend the conference.
Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid Moallem, paid a visit to Tehran on Tuesday. The Iranian news agency IRNA reported that Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, criticized the Annapolis summit during his meeting with Moallem, saying that the summit organizers - the Americans - "aim to connect all the Arab countries to the Zionist regime," and that the summit will only hurt the Palestinian cause. Syria's news agency reported that Iranian and Syrian officials agreed on every topic on the table, but did not elaborate.
Syria has stated that it will not attend the summit unless an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights is placed on the agenda. It is still not clear how the issue will be dealt with at the summit, but one proposal involves mentioning the matter either in the summit's opening declaration or its concluding statement. Also not yet finalized is the level of Syrian representation at the summit.
Moallem's visit to Iran comes one day after a historic meeting between Syria's president Assad and King Abdullah of Jordan, the first between the two leaders. Abdullah is considered a friend of the West, in stark comparison with Assad, who has been isolated for his ties to terrorism and Iran. Arab sources in Cairo emphasized that the significance of this meeting lies in its timing, just days before the Annapolis summit and elections in Lebanon. "Abdullah is the closest Arab figure to the United States and to Israel. By meeting with him, Assad is sending a message," one source said.
Some theorize that Syria withdrew its opposition to choosing a Lebanese presidential candidate in exchange for an invitation to Annapolis. The Lebanese election will be held Thursday, the last possible date to choose a president in accordance with the country's constitution. Lebanon's political rivals have not been able to agree on a candidate yet.
If no president is selected on Friday, it could create a political vacuum, and a subsequent crisis.
Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have emphasized their desire for Syria to be invited to Annapolis. Both states have had tense relations with Syria, in part due to the Second Lebanon War between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Assad insulted Arab leaders across the Middle East as "half men" for their hands-off stances during the fighting
"I fear that Annapolis and the way that Annapolis is framed still suffers from same problems of the previous peace process," said New America Foundation fellow and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy, referring to the last round of U.S.-led negotiations in 2000 at Camp David and calling the latest talks "ill-conceived and ill-prepared".
The Annapolis talks were originally announced to make substantive progress towards a detailed peace agreement that would include specifics about the "final status" of a Palestinian state and include broad participation from neighbouring Arab states. But recent disagreements between Israel and Palestine and vagueness about who will attend the conference call into question the viability of these goals.
Participation by Israel's Arab neighbours is considered paramount in effective talks as their implicit recognition of Israel gives the politically-weakened heads of both principal negotiators political cover for selling compromises to their citizens.
None of the neighbours -- including Syria and Saudi Arabia, which have no diplomatic relations with Israel -- are expected to respond to the invitations until after meetings of the Arab League that start this Thursday in Egypt. Syria has said it would not attend unless there was discussion about the Golan Heights -- captured by Israel in 1967 -- which appears doubtful.
With such a short period left before the meeting, it looks increasingly unlikely that the two main parties will be able to draft any statement of joint purpose before next week -- a central aim of the ever-diminishing expectations for the talks.
"Success entails some sort of a process," said David Wurmser, a former Middle East advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, at an Israel Project panel on the upcoming talks. "I would set a low bar -- success means that no damage is done."
Wurmser focused much of his opening remarks on the threats of North Korea, Venezuela and particularly Iran. He views the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a low priority, but which gets a disproportional amount of attention from the George W. Bush administration -- noting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is "almost wearing a hole in the atmosphere" with all her travel to the Middle East as part of the planning of the summit.
Conversely, Levy said that the U.S. was using an increased push for a solution to the Palestinian problem as a show of good faith to Arab nations to try to garner their support in opposition to the regional goals of Iran. This, said Levy, is consistent with the findings of the Iraq Study Group which took an "outside-in approach" to alleviating anti-U.S. sentiment and tensions due to the U.S. presence in Iraq by making some of the Arab states' priorities come to life in U.S. foreign policy.
With expectations so drastically lowered for any concrete steps forward in the peace process, it appears that the meeting in Annapolis could be reduced to a public relations campaign for many of the involved parties -- even U.S. participants.
"I think it goes back to why [Secretary Rice] was so eager to announce this conference," said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. "Her legacy now is that she is known as the person who stood in front of the world and said 'we don't want a ceasefire yet' when Israel was bombing Lebanon in the summer of 2006. She wants a photo-op that will give her a legacy as a peace-maker."
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