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Rice heads east but may find few allies

Simon Tisdall

Lebanon's Premier has said the U.S. Secretary of State is not welcome in Beirut.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE is portraying her Middle East tour this week as an opportunity to "rally moderate forces and moderate voices" following Israel's summer war on Lebanon and ahead of looming confrontation with Iran. But she has a lot of ground to make up and little in the way of help.

For many Arabs, the United States Secretary of State is returning to the scene of a crime.

The U.S.' refusal to back an immediate ceasefire in Israel's conflict with Hizbollah, which lasted 34 days and inflicted enormous damage on Lebanon, has further reduced its leverage on key issues. A low point came when Fuad Sinoria, Lebanon's pro-Western Prime Minister and the sort of "moderate" the U.S. wants to engage, said Ms. Rice was not welcome in Beirut.

The free rein given to Israel by Washington did not produce the intended results. As Robert Malley, a former senior Clinton administration official, has noted, Hizbollah emerged with its standing on the Arab street enhanced while that of Israel's once feared military and its political leadership was considerably dented. Nor had Ms. Rice's "utterly incomprehensible" hands-off approach created the lasting stability that was its ostensible justification, he said.

A new war against Hizbollah in which Israel sought to reassert its superiority was more likely than not, Mr. Malley suggested, and the U.N.'s reinforced but still largely toothless peacekeepers were in no position to stop it. "The conflict is no longer about achieving a specific objective ... It is about establishing one's power of deterrence, defining the rules of the game, showing who is boss."

That, in theory, is also Ms. Rice's pan-regional objective, to be achieved by diplomatic rather than military means.

Sticks to her stand

Speaking in Jeddah, Ms. Rice urged a halt to fighting between Hamas and Fatah factions in Gaza. But she made plain there would be no let-up in the U.S.-directed boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority which is stoking those tensions. And while paying lip service to a two-state solution, she did not diverge one inch from the administration's line that countering extremism in Iran and Iraq, and among Al-Qaeda and like-minded jihadists, was Washington's top priority.

That is more likely to dismay than rally Ministers from the eight "moderate" Arab Governments who met her in Cairo on Tuesday. "It is the hope that the U.S. will restart the peace process and lead the region to peace and stability," said Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister. He described the Israel-Palestinian conflict as the region's "core problem" on whose settlement the resolution of other disputes depended. Similar appeals have come from Egypt and Jordan.

Amid much soft talk of promoting moderation, Ms. Rice is carrying one tough message of her own. To Sunni Arab rulers worried by Shia Iran's nuclear and regional ambitions and shamed by Hizbollah's perceived prowess, the hard word from Washington is: back us in the coming fight with Iran. Ms. Rice may have no answers to old conflicts. But she is a willing cheerleader for new ones. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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