Egypt's UN representative tells Dina Ezzat about the importance of the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference resulting in something concrete and the repercussions if it does not Egypt's permanent representative to the UN Maged Abdel-Fattah is convinced that meetings conducted on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly by Arab and international players concerned will decide, to a great extent, the fate of the conference proposed by the US in the autumn on the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli problem. "If these meetings in New York fail to produce a clear outline for the proposed conference, then it will be very worrying," Abdel-Fattah said during a telephone interview prior to the launch of this week's meetings. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly from his office in New York, Abdel-Fattah said Egyptian concerns over the proceedings and outcome of the autumn meeting were clear and had been voiced at the highest level when President Hosni Mubarak warned that failure of the proposed meeting to produce concrete results in terms of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on final status issues would harm the image of all -- host and participants alike. In New York, a long list of meetings is designed to address the proposed summit on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations as well as the overall future of the Arab-Israeli struggle. The most crucial of these was a ministerial meeting convened on Sunday afternoon, bringing together the members of the international Quartet on the Middle East, along with it new envoy Tony Blair, and members of the Arab Peace Initiative, a composition of the Arab League secretary-general and 12 Arab foreign ministers, Egypt's included. At the end of the meeting one obvious ambiguity over the autumn gathering was made clear, at least partially. The list of participants, according to press statements made by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following the Quartet meeting, would include Syria, in its capacity as a member of the Arab Peace Initiative. However, it remains to be seen whether Damascus would head an invitation that the Sunday meeting decided would be strictly designed to address the Palestinian track. It is also unclear if the Saudis and other members of the Arab Peace Initiative ministerial committee would deem it appropriate to take part in a meeting alongside Israel's foreign minister in view of the failure of the Quartet meeting to formulate any potential outcome of the fall summit. Abdel-Fattah insisted there was clear understanding by all Arab parties concerned that there would be no free normalisation. However, speaking to the Weekly, he said the next round of meetings, including a set of bilateral ministerial gatherings, should help clarify the picture. When US President George Bush proposed the Middle East conference, Abdel-Fattah said, Egypt was enthusiastic. However, he added, from day one Cairo warned against the consequences of an inconclusive result. Today, Cairo's worst fear is that the Washington meeting does not materialise in the right format necessary for a productive diplomatic gathering. Still, he said, Egypt will continue to push to secure the kind of positive outcome that it deems necessary for the credibility of the diplomatic effort invested. According to the Egyptian diplomat, Cairo is not at all arguing the need for a final settlement to be blue-printed in the Washington meeting but it certainly wants a coherent mechanism to be set up for the negotiations over final status issues. "We cannot afford to walk into a meeting that will be merely an opportunity for some photos to be taken, and we will not settle for just any outcome," Abdel-Fattah said. Moreover, he said that whatever results are produced from the Washington meeting must be compatible with the terms of reference of relevant UN resolutions and with the text and spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative. Egypt seems keen to use the next UN General Assembly meeting to engage wider but more effective international management of the Middle East peace process, notwithstanding the role of the US. "But we want to encourage the Quartet as a whole to be more active. With former British prime minister Tony Blair being the envoy of the Quartet there has to be a more positive engagement." These demands will be further stressed by Cairo during a meeting President Mubarak is scheduled to convene with Rice during a planned visit to Cairo next month. Abdel-Fattah said this year's General Assembly which opened on Tuesday would be coupled with many sideline meetings addressing a wide range of other pressing Middle East issues. The potential for peace in Darfur is of major concern. On Saturday, several Arab foreign ministers and international players met in New York to discuss the need for a collective push for future negotiations scheduled to be initiated on 27 October between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels. The message from the meeting was that it was time for all Sudanese parties concerned to get down to serious negotiations and end stalling. According to Abdel-Fattah, it is the balanced approach that the international community needs to adopt between the views of the Khartoum government and that of the Darfur rebels that could lead to a prompt settlement of the crisis in western Sudan. As such, the warning from the meeting about the intentions of some rebel leaders to absent themselves from the 27 October meeting was perceived by Egypt as not being conducive to serious talks. The need for the conflicting Lebanese political forces to reach a consensual agreement on a potential presidential candidate to step into office on 15 November and the developments in Iraq will be highly visible in the works of this year's international congregation. Yesterday evening, New York time, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit was scheduled to meet his Saudi and French counterparts, Saud Al-Faisal and Bernard Kouchner and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa to discuss the next steps in Lebanon following the failure of previous attempts by Moussa and Kouchner to short-list presidential candidates that could fit the demands, and indeed concerns, of both the Lebanese majority and the opposition. Abdel-Fattah was not expecting a particularly new initiative, as such, to come out of the New York meetings on Lebanon. Nor was he overly concerned about rumours in certain diplomatic quarters that Terje Larsen, the UN envoy in charge of monitoring the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that demands prompt Lebanese presidential elections, would pursue a new UN Security Council resolution to force the selection of a semi-consensual president should the Lebanese protagonists fail to reach a consensus. Abdel-Fattah said the key outcome of the discussions scheduled to take place in New York over Lebanon is what he qualified as a positive momentum that would encourage all players on the Lebanese political scene, whether Lebanese or other regional and international players, to move forward towards a reconciliation that would spare the country from further decline and more hazardous security threats. Abdel-Fattah said that despite little hope for any immediate progress in the situation in Iraq, the New York meetings were still crucial in the sense that they allowed for a due check and balance exercise on the part of all concerned players. One issue Abdel-Fattah expects will draw much attention is the Middle East nuclear file. For close to three decades the General Assembly has been adopting two resolutions annually on the issue: one calls for the establishment of a nuclear free zone across the Middle East and the second warns against the hazards of nuclear proliferation in the region. Traditionally both resolutions demand that Israel ends its exemption from the otherwise complete Middle East membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But like many General Assembly resolutions, these two do not have much bite. "Obviously in view of the developments related to the Iranian nuclear file and the statements that were made [earlier in the year] by the Israeli prime minister over his country's nuclear capacity the debate over these resolutions will be intense," Abdel-Fattah predicted. He expected that the texts of both resolutions that have not been subject to much amendment recently should be altered in view of the recent developments. "Negotiations on the text of the resolutions are yet to start but we need to be clear and firm in our rejection of any proliferation of nuclear weapons by any country in the region," Abdel-Fattah said. He added that Egypt along with other Third World countries would also demand the fair transfer of peaceful nuclear technology and the peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear row. Also in relation to the security and stability in the region, Abdel-Fattah said, is the issue of climate change. He argued that while climate change might not have been traditionally perceived as a security threat, this was now changing. "We know that the developing countries who are not the main culprits of climate change are most likely to carry the brunt of the negative impact of that change," Abdel-Fattah insisted. He said that Egypt and other developing countries want the developed countries to shoulder their responsibilities in this respect both in terms of taking measures to reduce the destructive impact of their industries on world climate and by transferring to the developing countries the technology required to handle the results of climate change. On Monday, a special meeting on climate change was called for by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Along with these issues, several developing countries are planning to stress the need for the UN to accord more attention to socio-economic concerns. The combat against terrorism, the concept of human rights and the best way to promote them, the standards of women's rights and the need to address the growing concerns over disturbing rates of worldwide unemployment will all be on the agenda next Tuesday in New York. Given that this General Assembly is the first for Ban, Abdel-Fattah said he was confident that the new chief of the international organisation would work on addressing traditional global security threats and to accord adequate attention to new threats. "This, we hope, will be done with an eye on augmenting the influence and role of the UN in addressing any of these threats," Abdel-Fattah stated. Moreover, he argued that there was now a growing role "again" for Third World countries in underlining these issues. As the next chair of the Non Aligned Movement, Egypt, he said, would be coordinating a series of meetings to ensure that the perspective of the developing countries would be adequately reflected in all concerned texts and programmes of action adopted by the UN.
