Little can be expected out of the Quartet meeting as the US continues its preparations for war against Iraq, reports Khaled Dawoud from Washington Foreign ministers from the US, Russia, Denmark (representing the EU) and the United Nations secretary-general will meet in Washington tomorrow to discuss the long- delayed "roadmap" that is supposed to lead to the resumption of talks between Israel and Palestinians. There is a consensus, though, that no serious moves can be expected before Israeli elections in late January. "We don't expect the final draft to be announced at the conclusion of the meeting," said one US official. "There seems to be an agreement among all parties involved in the process that it is not practical to announce such plans ahead of the Israeli election." According to US diplomats, European and Arab countries have been dismayed by Washington's repeated delays in releasing the final draft of the roadmap that has been already under discussion for months. Some Europeans were rumoured to have considered not attending the Washington Quartet meeting and only agreed to participate after they were told the foreign ministers and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would meet with US President George Bush to explain their position. The Palestinians were even more sceptical that the Bush administration would be willing to play a positive role after US Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated in a speech last week calls for "a new and different Palestinian leadership". In contrast to Washington's indifference last month to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's call for a new Middle East peace conference, Washington said it "deeply appreciated" the premier's recent suggestion for a meeting in London in mid-January to discuss pushing forward Palestinian reforms. "We welcome the (British) announcement," said US State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher on Tuesday. "A conference like this would be useful in providing an opportunity to reinforce and encourage Palestinian reform efforts, and builds on and strengthens the work already undertaken by the international task force and the Quartet through progress on reform as well as on performance on security." The most eagerly awaited announcement to come out of Washington, though, will concern Iraq, and is expected either today or tomorrow. After the UN's chief arms inspector, Hans Blix, provides a preliminary assessment of Iraq's 12,000-page declaration to members of the Security Council today, US officials expect President Bush to make his own evaluation. Officials involved in the Iraq file said President Bush was likely to find Iraq in "material breach" of the UN Security Council resolution though this is not expected to be cited as an immediate case for war. On Monday US Secretary of State Colin Powell was the first senior official to publicly say Washington was not happy with the Iraqi declaration, claiming it lacked information on biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. "The president at some point has to decide on material breach," one official said. "No such decisions, either by the president or his advisers, have been taken." The New York Times reported on Wednesday that a senior State Department official, John S Wolf, met Blix on Tuesday to describe inconsistencies the American intelligence agencies say they have found in the Iraqi declaration. US officials said they did not expect the alleged Iraqi violations to be described by Bush as an immediate cause for war, but rather as a "serious matter" and evidence that Iraq was again employing hide-and-seek tactics with inspectors. "What you will see will be a patient White House, very concerned about another failure by Iraq to cooperate but willing to allow the weapons inspections to go ahead," one administration official familiar with the debate on Iraq told The New York Times. Another said the administration would use the alleged omissions in the Iraqi declaration to step up pressure on the UN to demand interviews with Iraqi scientists outside Iraq, expecting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will resist such interviews. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld confirmed to reporters on Tuesday that Washington will insist on implementing the provision in Resolution 1441 relating to Iraqi scientists, taking them out of Iraq with their families. Otherwise Washington will declare that Baghdad "has violated that resolution". "We know for a fact that the most important information that inspectors have ever gotten on what's going on in Iraq has come from defectors and from people who had personal knowledge inside the country as to what was happening, and knew where things were and knew how things were done, and knew what the denial and deceptive approaches and practices were," Rumsfeld said. "And when we had that kind of expert opinion from inside -- from people who had been inside the country, knew the programmes, that was when we were able to discover things. You've got to get them (scientists) out and you've got to get their families out. And that was an important part of the UN resolution," he said.
