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Nov

18

About that Middle East conference/summit/meeting in Annapolis thing


I will do the Wide Open round-up for the day, but first, an update.

In July, I posted this entry when President Bush announced that there would be

an international meeting

this fall

of representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties.

The key participants in this meeting will be the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbors in the region.

Secretary Rice will chair the meeting.

She and her counterparts will review the progress that has been made toward building Palestinian institutions.

They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform.

And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state.

That’s the exact content, but broken up in order to emphasize the details outlined by Bush.

This past Friday, on the Diane Rehm show, the roundtable panelists belittled what has become of those details by saying that what was to be a summit or conference seems to be turning into little more than a chat at the cash register (not their words precisely but basically their idea that something grand is now so amorphous as to be worthless).

In part, this is also because next to nothing is known about the meeting – including its date and location.

Did anyone ever promise you some unbelievably cool vacation or toy or food item that you either never went on, didn’t receive or hated eating?

This would feel a little like those situations, if it weren’t the fact that the expectations didn’t resonate much in reality when Bush originally made the announcement.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:38 pm November 18th, 2007 in Foreign Affairs, Politics 

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2 Responses to “About that Middle East conference/summit/meeting in Annapolis thing”

  1. 1 THE POWELLIZING OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE… on November 19th, 2007 10:59 am

    [...] has been following this story for some time and wrote an update yesterday, but I fear that the news this morning from the Washington Post supports my [...]

  2. 2 Annapolis Peace Conference - is even the name apt? | Writes Like She Talks on November 24th, 2007 11:30 pm

    [...] meeting in Annapolis, Maryland re: the Middle East, that much about the title or the previously stated expectations for the event were ever apt, and are, least of all, apt [...]

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