Will the UN serve as the launching ground for Obama's signature policies of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and sanctions against Iran? asks Graham Usher from New York Barack Obama wants the United Nations General Assembly this month to be the stage where he can parade a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Rumours are already thick of a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the margins that the American leader will chair. This will draw heat and light but it's a sideshow. The main event will be another US-driven meeting in the wings to levy new "harsh" Security Council sanctions on Iran for its ongoing nuclear programme. A meeting in Frankfurt on Wednesday with diplomats from the US, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia discussed the issue. The two events are related. Israel reportedly told the Americans that even a temporary settlement freeze -- the condition for any meaningful resumption of peace talks -- would be forthcoming only if "crippling" sanctions were imposed on Iran for its continued enrichment of uranium in defiance of US and UN demands that it stop. Washington, reportedly, accepted the trade. It's easy to see why. President Obama has made Israeli- Palestinian peacemaking and Iran ending its nuclear programme the cornerstone of his Middle East policy. The General Assembly is the natural forum to create the illusion that there is an international consensus behind both moves. But there's no consensus -- at least not in the policies' present incarnation. Even by Israeli standards Netanyahu's offer of a "temporary" freeze is fictive. It would exclude settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and 2,400 houses currently under construction in the West Bank. Nor would it cover "natural growth", a ruse successive Israeli governments have invoked to thaw even the most frigid of freezes. According to a report in Haaretz, "US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has recognised the fact that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cannot announce a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem." US officials deny the charge. As well they might. Not only would it breach craven pledges by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that "this time" a freeze would include "natural growth". More important, it would contradict the 2002 Palestinian- Israeli roadmap based on recommendations from an earlier report by Mitchell that called for an unlimited halt on "all settlement activity". It would also put Abbas in an impossible bind. Under pressure from European and Arab allies, he may well agree to a photo-op with Netanyahu at the UN. But he could hardly endorse negotiations that conceded Israel's right to colonise Jerusalem. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit insists any freeze would have to include the putative Palestinian capital if peace talks are to restart. "Jerusalem is Arab, and it will continue to be so," he said in Stockholm on 28 August. The "consensus" on Iran may be equally frail, despite the opprobrium earned by the regime for its presidential election in June and subsequent suppression of dissidence. Washington and Israel were hoping that the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) latest report on Iran's nuclear programme released on 28 August would enable a case for harsher sanctions. The case was not made. The IAEA said Tehran had ignored requests by the agency to surrender documents linking the military to the nuclear programme or allow access to officials suspected of weapons development. But it unearthed no new evidence that Iran was enriching uranium for anything other than civilian and peaceful purposes, which, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is legally entitled to do. The impact of the report was deflationary. Tehran said the IAEA had simply "emphasised that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful". A mealy-mouthed US State Department said the report "clearly shows that Iran continues to expand its nuclear programme and deny the IAEA most forms of cooperation." And Israel accused the IAEA and its Director-General Mohamed El-Baradei of appeasement. The report "does not reflect the entirety of the information the IAEA holds on Iran's efforts to advance their military programme, nor their continued efforts to conceal and deceive and their refusal to cooperate with the IAEA and the international community," railed an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement on 29 August. Instead Tel Aviv wants "significant steps to cancel Iran's weapons programme". This view is shared to a lesser extent by the US, Britain, France and Germany. But it is not held by Russia and China, both of which have extensive economic ties with Iran. It would be a "hard sell" for either country to endorse a higher level of sanctions, ceded a US official, particularly if aimed at Iran's dependence on petroleum imports and foreign technology to develop its oil and gas industries. Obama's spring is approaching winter. Faced by a domestic backlash against his signature health reform and an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan, no movement on either peace or Iran would exude a general aura of failure. It would also increase the danger of war. In July Obama urged Israel to stop "ranting and raving" about military strikes against Iran until after the UN meeting. Instead it should defer to a diplomacy that would offer Iran economic incentives in return for ending its nuclear programme or face an international coalition armed with harsher sanctions. The UN meeting is nearly upon us, the coalition is un-built and Iran has said it "will not accept any political pressure to take measures beyond its legal commitments." Israel is watching the clock. (see p.5)
