Clinton's policy on Mideast peace coming unstruck

By Sid Balman Jr.

WASHINGTON (UPI): It was near midnight on June 25 in Jerusalem and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher had just been informed that a terrorist bomb had ripped through an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Ted Kattouf, charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, told Christopher during a brief telephone conversation to prepare for the worst. He said scores of dead and wounded were expected in the most lethal attack against an overseas American installation since the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut nearly 13 years ago.

Christopher had just wrapped up a frustrating round of consultations with new Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which revealed to him that the Clinton administration may have to "start from scratch" on the Middle East peace process and possibly re-examine relations with Israel.

Aides said Christopher wondered aloud whether he should travel to Saudi Arabia, and what impact the bombing would have on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf and in the region as a whole.

There was a lot of "soul searching that night," they said. Christopher stopped in the lobby of the LaRomme hotel Wednesday morning, and, with his usual wooden, detached delivery, issued the Clinton administration's standard line on defeating the enemies of peace.

After 21 trips to the Middle East and 274,000 miles of travel in search of political and economic reconciliation between Arab and Israeli, it has become increasingly evident that Christopher's role has been reduced to that of a diplomatic fireman -- rushing off to douse blazes in spots like Israel, Lebanon and, now, Saudi Arabia.

"I suspect the bombing will be viewed as a watershed event for the Clinton administration -- a punctuation mark for our policies in the Middle East and for the tenure of Christopher and his team," a senior U.S. official close to both the secretary of state and the president told United Press International under conditions of anonymity.

The four pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East are maintaining an iron-clad alliance with Israel, helping its leaders make a secure peace with Arab neighbors by returning occupied land, projecting power in the Persian Gulf to insure the uninterrupted supply of oil to the West and isolating "rogue" states Iran, Iraq and Libya.

In each one of those areas, the Clinton administration has barely managed to keep its head above water. And the fallout from President Clinton's failure to advance American interests in the Middle East could become a political liability during his bid for a second term at the White House.

The unraveling of Clinton administration Middle East policy can be traced back to the night of Nov. 4, 1995, when Yigal Amir, a right-wing Israeli law student, fired two bullets into the back of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in protest over his handling of the peace process.

There had been numerous attacks against Israel and its policy of reconciling with the Arab world before then -- by both Moslem and Jewish extremists -- but the assassination of Rabin clearly had the potential to deliver the peace process a fatal blow.

In a stunning show of support for Israel and for Rabin's peace strategies, Clinton stood side by side at the funeral with Jordan's King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders from the Middle East and the West.

But senior aides to Clinton and Christopher say the president made a mistake by criticizing Netanyahu for whipping up the type of frenzy among the Israeli right wing that led to the assassination. Netanyahu had accused Rabin of compromising Israeli security in the interest of peace and vowed never to return Syria's Golan Heights or permit Palestinians to carve a state out of territory some Jews view as their biblical legacy.

"Words have consequences," Clinton told reporters on Air Force One before landing in Israel Nov. 6. "People can be driven to extremes.

"I admire (the Israelis') big and raucous arguments, but we've got to keep this thing within proper bounds. That's the lesson here."

While vowing to keep out of Israeli domestic affairs, Clinton made no secret of his support for Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, during the ensuing race against Netanyahu.

Although Netanyahu's aides say the prime minister holds no grudges, relations between Israel and the United States since the election appear awkward and forced.

U.S. and Israeli officials said Netanyahu even refused to see Ambassador Dennis Ross, Christopher's top aide for Middle East affairs, when Christopher suggested last month that his envoy journey to Israel after the election for discussions leading up to the prime minister's July 9 White House visit.

Nothing personal, Christopher's aides say Netanyahu told their boss, but the American secretary of state should be the first Clinton administration official to come calling.

U.S. and Israeli officials said the meeting between Netanyahu and Christopher in Jerusalem June 25 was cordial, but the prime minister revealed "only the vaguest generalities" about his approach to peace negotiations and relations with the United States.

At a news conference afterwards, Netanyahu said he would speak in greater detail about his policies during his meeting with Clinton.

Netanyahu's consultations with Christopher did not do much to ease the concerns of the Arab world either, particularly Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Arab officials say they were hoping Christopher could thresh some hard policy from Netanyahu's campaign rhetoric, but Netanyahu would not even commit to the principle of swapping occupied territory for peace.

The Arabs, for whom the Clinton administration had tried to be an honest broker, were slipping away as well.

At a summit in Cairo a few days earlier, 20 Arab leaders met to craft a unified approach to the alarming turn of events in the Middle East. Much to the consternation of the United States, they welcomed Sudanese President Lt. Gen. Umar Hasan Bashir, who is harboring the two leading suspects in an assassination attempt on Mubarak, and Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadafi, who was permitted to fly into Cairo despite a UN embargo on commercial air traffic with Tripoli.

The effort to isolate nations that the United States identifies as sponsors of international terrorism and enemies of the peace process -- Libya, Iran and Iraq in particular -- was never really embraced by the Arabs or allies in Europe and Asia.

There was too much money to be made trading petroleum, vending weapons, constructing nuclear power plants and modernizing crumbling infrastructures.

France, a traditional patron of the Arabs, leads the Europeans in their policy of "constructive engagement" with nations Christopher refers to as the "pariah states."

And Paris, due in large part to the deft diplomacy of Foreign Minister Herve De Charette, formally reasserted its role in the Arab Middle East during the 17-day firefight this spring between Israel and Shiite Muslim guerrillas based in southern Lebanon.

Christopher took eight days to broker an unsigned two-page "understanding" that ended a round of fighting in which 170 Lebanese civilians were killed -- 102 during one misguided Israeli artillery attack on a UN base that may have done more to set back Israel's relations with the Arab world than any other single event since the 1973 war.

U.S. officials were enraged at De Charette's maneuverings with Iran, which joins Syria as the principal sponsors of the Lebanon- based Party of God guerrillas, and said they considered his efforts a transparent attempt to break Washington's monopoly in the Middle East.

Christopher's star was dimming in the region, a point driven home during the fourth day of the Lebanon shuttle when Syrian President Hafez Assad met with De Charette and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati but broke an appointment in Damascus with the American secretary of state.

The fourth pillar of U.S. policy in the Middle East, the only one over which Washington has been willing to fight, is the projection of force in the Persian Gulf to protect strategic petroleum supplies. The future of that initiative, which relies on the hospitality of such nations as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, now appears threatened by the Dhahran bombing.

U.S. officials say the bombing, which killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds more, was carried out by an unknown group apparently opposed to the Kingdom's close relations with the West and its willingness to permit a foreign military presence. Such sentiments are also simmering in Bahrain, which has suffered through a recent rash of terrorist bombings.

Foreign policy has rarely had a significant impact on presidential elections in the United States. But the image of U.S. soldiers returning in body bags from the deserts of the Middle East could have resonance for voters.