.jpg)
|
|
|
Clinton: Iraq war not helping Mideast peace efforts Saturday, July 10, 2004 Posted: 3:41 PM EDT (1941 GMT) (CNN) -- Although the Bush administration believes former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein was an inherent threat to the Mideast, going to war in
Iraq has not aided the Middle East peace process, former President Clinton
told CNN in a recent interview. The road to peace in the Mideast does not go through Baghdad, but rather
"through resolving the differences between the Palestinians and the
Israelis," he said. The Bush administration, Clinton said, "thought if we could have
a representative, pluralistic government in Iraq it would destabilize
and force change in other autocratic regimes in the Middle East and it
might even help us make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians." However, brokering peace between Israelis and Palestinians depends on
"giving the Israelis a rock-solid guarantee of security and normal
relations with its neighbors, and giving the Palestinians their own country
on the West Bank ... with their capital in the eastern part of Jerusalem,"
Clinton told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview that will air in
its entirety this weekend. "I think that that will do more than anything else to reduce the
impulse of terror around the world, and especially in the region, and
give the Middle East a peaceful future." Clinton said at the end of his presidency he met with President Bush
and advised him that his biggest security issue would be Osama bin Laden
and his terror network, al Qaeda. The second issue, Clinton predicted, would be the absence of a peace
process in the Middle East, because it was a major underlying cause of
Mideast terror. Clinton, whose administration spent his term as president trying to forge
a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, said he could
understand why Bush would not want to make such a commitment of time and
resources. "On the other hand, there's one rule we know. I don't think that
when you're dealing with the Middle East or with any thorny, long-simmering
problem, you can hold yourself to a standard that says the only success
is a complete agreement. "Because if that's your standard, then your success or failure totally
depends upon what other people decide to do and how they read their own
interests," Clinton said. Just before leaving office, Clinton proposed that Israel allow Palestinians
sovereignty over a site in the Old City in Jerusalem that is holy to both
Muslims and Jews. The site is known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims
as the Noble Sanctuary. In exchange for the Israeli compromise, the Clinton proposal asked the
Palestinian Authority to abandon its claim to the so-called right of return. Neither side agreed with the terms. "You know, we can't impose a peace, we shouldn't impose a peace.
It won't work if we do. But we can help get the politics right, and if
they want a security guarantee, we ought to give it to them." Discussing the war in Iraq, Clinton said he believed the United States
should have allowed U.N. weapons inspectors to finish their work there
before launching an attack. Clinton also said he believes the United States should have moved more
quickly to "internationalize" the war. "And that would have required us early on letting the United Nations have a say in the political decisions, opening the contracts up to people other than Americans and their allies and just basically trying to say 'OK, Saddam's gone we need everybody's help to make it right.' " According to Clinton, the Bush administration squandered a chance to
lead other nations in a "united front against terror" by waging
a unilateral war on Iraq and building on the impression that America cooperates
only when it must. However, he said he expects the United States will now receive more help
from NATO allies.
|
|
|
This website is volunteer managed, designed and donated. Content is the sole responsibility of Democrats of Napa Valley Club. Democrats
of Napa Valley |
||