Obama Adviser: Next President's First Term May Be Last Chance for Mideast Peace
by Josh Gerstein
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 at 4:54 PM
A senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, Gregory Craig, is arguing that the next four years may offer a final opportunity to achieve peace in the Middle East.
"This is, maybe, a last chance this next term," Mr. Craig said at a foreign policy forum in Denver this morning. "Not only a last chance for a president of the United States to be relevant…but for the people in the region to reach an accommodation….It's one of these strange situations where we know what the answer is and the idea is getting people to it."
Mr. Craig's comments suggest that if the presumptive Democratic nominee, Mr. Obama, wins in November, he would press quickly for talks among Israel, the Palestinian Arabs, and others in the region, such as Syria and Lebanon. President Bush and President Clinton both made their most assertive drives for a peace deal in the waning months or days of their presidency.
Speaking at policy discussion sponsored by the New America Foundation in connection with the Democratic National Convention, Mr. Craig also boasted that one of Mr. Obama's "most successful meetings" on his recent trip to the Middle East was with former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A pollster who serves as president of the Arab-American Insitute, John Zogby, warned Mr. Bush's policies have contributed to a rise of extremism in the Middle East that may be impossible to reverse.
"At the very point where we have consensus around a two- state solution, the conditions on the ground are such that you may not be able to ever achieve it," Mr. Zogby said. "It not as if electing a new president changes things in the region. It doesn't. Iran will still be there in it's full—they're not going to give us a break. Hamas and Hezbollah are not going to give us a break. Israeli settlement building will not give us a break."
Asked to detail how Mr. Obama will follow through on his pledge for high-level talks with Iran, Mr. Craig declined. However, he argued that Mr. Obama would likely have the upper hand in any talks of that sort. "If must say if I were an Iranian leader, I would not know exactly how to deal with a Barack Obama," Mr. Craig said. "That would be somebody that would be hard to demonize. He'd be hard to put in a box for the Iranian people. ….In that comparative advantage, we come out in good shape to engage that negotiation or discussion."
Related Topics: General Election
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