12/04/2004 By Haaretz Staff and Reuters United States President George W. Bush will Monday launch a 10-day rounds of talks focusing on the Middle East, with a meeting at his central Texas ranch with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Arab world. The series of meetings, which will include talks on April 14 with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is intended to help lay the groundwork for Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Mubarak is on his first visit to the United States in two years. Besides Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects, Bush and Mubarak are expected to talk about the chaotic situation in Iraq, where mounting casualties and bloodshed raise question about a U.S. pledge to transfer sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government by June 30.
They will also discuss Bush’s Greater Middle East Initiative, which calls for political and economic reforms in the region. Mubarak has warned the United States against trying to impose a ready-made solution on the entire Middle East. Upon his return to Washington, Bush will hold talks on Wednesday with Sharon. Former President Jimmy Carter said last week that Bush’s government was linked too closely to that of Sharon and needed a more even-handed approach. Bush and Sharon are expected to work out details of Sharon’s proposal to withdraw from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward implementing the U.S.-backed peace roadmap envisioning a Palestinian state by 2005. U.S. and Israeli officials last week reached tentative agreement on key components of the Israeli plan, and sources said Bush is expected to back it as an interim step. In Washington, senior Israeli officials met with top Bush administration officials on Sunday in a bid to complete details of „understandings” between the two sides. U.S. and Israeli officials want to make sure the withdrawal does not allow the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas to cement its grip over Palestinian affairs in Gaza, where the militants have been a powerful force. Washington regards Hamas, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, as a terrorist organization, and did not criticize Israel’s assassination last month of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin. Egypt has offered to secure its side of the border with Gaza, a move Israel sees as crucial to stemming the flow of weapons to Hamas. After his Mubarak and Sharon talks, Bush will sit down with another key Middle Eastern ally, Jordan’s King Abdullah, on April 21 in Washington. Sharon has proposed evacuating Israeli settlements in hard-to-defend enclaves in the Gaza Strip and setting up a new „security line” in the West Bank. While welcoming a pullout from occupied land, the Palestinians have said unless Israel leaves the West Bank entirely there is little hope of reviving the road map, which has been stalled by tit-for-tat Israeli-Palestinian violence. They fear Sharon will use the security line to annex West Bank settlement blocs. The White House says it is still seeking a negotiated final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians and wants Sharon to stick as closely as possible to the road map. BPI.
