Sergei Lavrov (left) hardly thought that Abbas’s (right) speech will generally be address to the United States.
Photo: AP
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Palestine Gets Autonomy from Russia
// Middle East settlement
Yesterday, there was an international meeting, officially called “meeting to discuss the Palestinian Authority.” It was meant to be a demonstration of the international support to the efforts of the new Palestinian authority in reforming the autonomy and resuming the peaceful process. Sergei Lavrov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs took part in it. He tried to book an active participant’s role for Russia. However, the plans are doomed to failure.
Palestine has been keeping trying to conduct such a meeting. Russia has been supporting them. Israel was against it, saying that international meetings didn’t help to settle conflicts, but just turned into discussions. In this case the major reason is the Palestinian extremists that the autonomy’s authority have to stroke down. Israel said there’s no need to have a meeting before that happens. United States shared their opinion.
However, some questions, concerning the two states crisis needed the assistance of the world community. Firstly, it’s the financial aid and assistance in reforming the state structures. Tony Blair offered to gather a meeting in London to discuss the ways Palestine can get help. As a result, UN General Secretary, U.S. State Secretary, heads of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of more then twenty countries, including Russian, Xavier Solana, and representatives of the World Bank gathered in London yesterday.
But the most important guest was Palestinian leader Abbas. He took his time before he agreed to come to London. They were hoping in Palestine that they will manage to gather as much as possible. In Abbas’s opinion such a meeting would schedule definite steps to be taken to renew the negotiations between Palestine and Israel. But United States let them see that Palestine should not count on that. At least, before Abbas reforms the power structures, including force one and takes control over the extremists groups. Finally, it was decided to discuss the ways they can help Palestinian authority to make reforms.
Israel supported such an idea. But Israel refused to take part in the meeting because it was afraid that the participants would change their mind and start pressing the state of Israel. “There’s no shortage of goodwill but we need some clarity about the framework for support”- Tony Blair said yesterday. According to him, the world community needed to work out a mechanism of solving Palestinian problems. Actually, the mechanism is money. And as a result, Russia was not in the ball game.
Europe last week indicated that over the next year somewhere in the region of 250 million euros could be set aside to support this process. The UK Government has contributed and extra £ 10 million taking it to £30 million for their contribution. There were also mane countries around the table.
So Russia looked rather pale promising to write off $1.3 million debt for renting the building of Embassy in Moscow, to build two schools in Palestine, to provide assistance through Ministry of Emergencies and to increase the number of grants for the Palestinian students. It’s not enough for the country that wants to play a kea role in the settlement.
Moscow has foreseen such a result. As far as Kommersant is informed, it was Moscow that insisted on the parallel conference on providing Palestine with assistance. Russia wanted to be an intermediary, just like USA, EU and UN.
Apparently, they decided in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Russian is not reach enough to afford a well-balanced policy in the Middle East. After a long pause, Russia is quite strict with Israel again hoping it will gain respect of Arabian world. In the past, Russia wanted Israel to be more reserved in the question of the separatory wall and now Russia makes its partners to say they are strongly against the building. And Moscow becomes more strict in its demanding that Israel should leave the occupied territories.
But this tactics is too late. Unlike his predecessor, Abbas doesn’t want to flirt with Russia. Palestine wants to deal with strong and wealthy countries, that the United States and European Union represent. As far as Kommersant is informed, Moscow wanted to teach the staff and provide the special forces of Palestine with equipment. As a result it would help to influence the state. That is also the reason Moscow wants to assist to establish Palestinian diplomatic service.
But yesterday’s meeting actually killed these hopes. It was decided to establish several groups that would help to reform different structures of the Palestinian autonomy. The United States is the supervisor.
Aleksandr Reutov
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 02, 2005
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