Bush plays biggest role since Truman in Middle East dispute [Excellent read]
AQABA, Jordan--Everyone talked about Israeli-Palestinian peace at the summit staged here by President Bush on Wednesday, but the unanswerable question seems to be whether Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas will be able to use Bush's proverbial road map to reach that destination.Click on link to read the rest.The Palestinian Authority's Abbas committed himself to several way stations that may prove very hard to reach. One is to bring the 33-month "intifada" against Israel to an end.
Within minutes of Bush's carefully worded declaration carried live on radio and TV worldwide, the Islamic militant Hamas organization announced it will not disarm until a Palestinian state comes into being and Israeli forces are withdrawn from its territory.
Israel's Sharon promised to dismantle and remove all unauthorized Jewish settlements from the areas due to be handed over to the projected state and to make sure they are contiguous rather than a polka dotlike layout of isolated sectors reminiscent of South Africa's Bantustans.
These are the most operative aspects of Bush's peace plan. Their swift implementation will determine whether his "dream" of two states existing side by side in peace, which has been adopted by Sharon and Abbas, can be realized.
Bush raised one of the bitterest aspects of the Jewish-Arab conflict when he repeated his dedication to "Israel's security as a vibrant Jewish state." The deliberate implication of those words is that the United States sides with Israel in opposing the return of Palestinian Arab refugees--their sympathizers say there are 6.3 million of them--to the cities, towns and villages they fled in 1948. Political insiders in Israel contend that Sharon virtually dictated that passage to Bush and made acceptance of the road map conditional on the public enunciation of those words.
Consciously and deliberately, Bush led the United States into an unprecedented involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, expanding his armed forces' control of Iraq to include monitoring of Israeli and Palestinian adherence to the road map's political and geographical guidelines.
Not since President Harry Truman embraced the UN General Assembly's decision to partition Palestine into adjacent Jewish and Arab states has an American chief executive played such a crucial role in trying to wind down the centuries-old dispute between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land.
Bush flies over Baghdad in Air Force One
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, June 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush flew over Baghdad, Iraq, on Thursday in Air Force One, escorted by four fighter jets, on his way back to the United States from Qatar.White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters Air Force One flew over Iraq and Baghdad at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,500 metres) and at a ground speed of 467 mph (751.5 km). Bush entered Iraqi air space and flew over the Iraqi capital at 12:55 p.m. local (5:55 EDT/0955 GMT).
As the U.S. president flew over the city, once the headquarters of toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the pilot tipped one of the jet's wing to improve the view.
The weather was clear and from his window, Bush would have been able to make out the Tigris river, Baghdad International Airport, streets, bridges and parks.