Posted on 10/25/2007 8:17:38 AM PDT by SJackson
Washington — Former President Jimmy Carter met Wednesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss ways Carter and other senior statesmen might help support administration efforts to broker peace among Palestinians and Israelis.
The talks took place hours after Rice warned the House Foreign Affairs Committee that chances for an Arab-Israeli peace accord were in danger of slipping away, as she works to bring Palestinians and Israelis together in Annapolis, Md., late next month for what would be the first substantive face-to-face peace talks in seven years.
Carter met separately on Capitol Hill with the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), to discuss whether informal diplomacy might be able to help advance the peace process after the envisioned Annapolis talks conclude.
Carter has ruled out a role for himself, or for the other statesmen, before the peace conference, said former Carter aide Stuart Eizenstat, who attended Wednesday's meeting.
With efforts to bring together Palestinians and Israelis at a delicate juncture, Carter "doesn't want to throw another set of actors" into the mix, said Eizenstat, who served as Carter's chief domestic policy adviser. Instead, he said, Carter wants "to see what happens — if anything — in the conference."
Carter declined to discuss Wednesday's meeting, which included a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), who chairs the subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.
"I don't have time to talk," Carter said, waving off a reporter immediately after the half-hour meeting in Lantos' office. "I have a plane to catch."
Carter is part of the so-called Elders Group, assembled last July by former South African President Nelson Mandela. The group, including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, recently visited Darfur, Sudan, and, working closely with U.N. personnel and others on the ground, prepared a report on human rights conditions in the troubled region.
One possibility Carter is exploring is whether the group, chaired by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, might weigh in similarly on the Palestinian-Israeli question, said former Carter aide Robert Pastor, interim co-director of the elders group.
"We're not talking about mediation or negotiations. We're talking about just exploring whether a report would be useful," said Pastor. "We're at a very early stage of prebriefings and consultations."
In testimony before Lantos' committee earlier Wednesday, Rice warned that Iranian support for the militant group Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, has influenced Palestinian politics to the point where chances for a historic compromise with Israel could be fading.
There was no immediate response from the White House or the State Department about the question of whether Carter might be called upon to help break the potentially dangerous impasse in the U.S.-Mideast relations, much as he used informal diplomacy to broker compromises with North Korea and Haiti a decade ago.
"I have no way of knowing whether anything like that is ongoing," said Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinksi. "I doubt that the administration would be very receptive and so I'm a little skeptical about the speculation, but who ... knows?"
The Elder’s Group? Look at who some of the members are!
Carter is part of the so-called Elders Group, South African President Nelson Mandela. former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan chaired by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, former Carter aide Robert Pastor, interim co-director of the elders group.
Bunch o’ real elderberries!
Ask Jimmah to get back to the Sudan for a visit with his brutal Islamic totalitarian buddy of a dictator.
That is time better spent and we are always safer when he is a far away from the U.S. as possible.
Even if they don’t intend to take Jimmy’s advice, by doing this they are lending him legitimacy and suggesting that this antisemitic jackass has the President’s authority to interfere in the Middle East.
Insane.
Next, bring James Baker back as negotiator.
LOL! This is the only explanation that makes any sense at all.
Is there any question now why this country and the world is so screwed up?
Any remaining respect I had for Condi (and there wasn't much) has just vanished. What a useless (insert word).
Asking the one person who played a big role in making the Palestinian terrorist movement- and the entire ME terrorist movement- what it is today for "advice" has got to be the most idiotic thing she has done to date. May as well give nukes to the terrorists.
This shows that she has no grasp of the situation whatsoever; she's just following the same old "Palestinian" lie that a foundation of peace can never be built on.
One more year. Can we survive?
Is there no end to the meddling of this Anti-
Semite birdbrain?
It's a collection of the most primitive minds on the planet. They must have been selected because they xrays show that their brains hadn't quite evolved to the current human size. No doubt monkey woman Jane Goodall selected this "group of elders".
Now you can see why the UN is so corrupt and screwed up, and what a wonderful job they are doing with Africa."group of elders", what a joke. A washed up terrorist, a washed up murdering dictator, a con- artist, and a peanut farmer, all uneducated idiots.
Dr Rice, like her boss, are class acts who will be civil even to people who utter the most vile untruths about them. Shows that they are people of good character. Unfortunately they are too nice for their own good, and need to engage in some hardball, pardon the expression, more often.
Why do we give Carter of all people a seat at this table? This is all about him. It isn’t about peace.
Carter, your legacy will continue to be the dead Shaw of Iran, and what you ushered in to replace him that we are having to deal with 35 years later.
Rat bastard...
For some reason I suspect that these two together are several nutrients short of minimal brain function.
“Attention To Jihad Deficit Syndrome”, aka, “Shi’ite for Brains”!
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