Turkish Forum

Category: Middle East

  • Talking ‘Turkey’ about genocide

    Talking ‘Turkey’ about genocide

    by Michael Tomlin

    Posted: Thursday, March 19, 2009

    Government, like business, needs leaders with standards, beliefs and values. We expect retailers to “just say no” to lead paint on toys. And we should expect our elected leaders to call genocide what it was and is.

    At issue is President Obama, caught in the pragmatic twist of pragmatists – people who believe only in current convenience – having declared during his campaign the historic annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians as “genocide” now may be backing off the term so not to insult Turkey, which he will visit in April.

    Turkey of course is that same country with laws protecting and prohibiting itself from being insulted. Write an unflattering book or article about Turkey and you can be arrested and jailed. That is insult enough, done to themselves, separating them from the enlightened world.

    In Michael Doyle’s story for McClatchy Newspapers (Idaho Statesman, Mar. 18, 2009) diplomats warn of potential fallout should the U.S. president stand and call the genocide of the Ottoman Empire what it was. It would be “poorly received,” stated one former ambassador. What should be poorly received is Turkey, in any collection of civilized nations until they learn to accept criticism.

    What if our congressional leaders failed to question the AIG banker bonuses because criticism might be “poorly received” in the banking industry? OK, the questioning is a sham … but at least it’s an open and contentious sham. Let’s cover up the peanut paste scandal, too, and not risk being poorly received by the company allegedly responsible for numerous food-borne illnesses and deaths.

    Just as a good parent chooses carefully whom they allow their children to play with, so should business leaders and elected leaders make similar choices – based upon values and beliefs, behavior, actions, and deserved reputations. This is not a call for isolationism; there are businesses and countries aplenty for us to “play” with.

    I recently cancelled an account with Bank of America, and will soon do so with AIG. There are plenty of others I cherish – my relationship with my State Farm Insurance agent, ditto for Mountain West Bank, a new relationship with Les Bois Credit Union, restaurants and shoe makers, airlines and my doctor. They re-earn my patronage with their behavior over the years, not just with each meeting or transaction.

    I expect no less from business leaders selecting their suppliers and distributers. And I have even a higher standard for my president. Stand for the United States and our interests, and don’t stand at all with those not ready for prime time on the world stage. It’s not the pragmatic view, but then values seldom are.

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    Talking Turkey: Denying the Iraqi Genocide

    Written by Paul Craig Roberts
    Sunday, 21 October 2007 16:20
    The Iraqi Genocide
    by Paul Craig Roberts
    Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?

    As a result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations.

    If one is a genocide, so is the other.
    It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush’s destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.

    Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as “informants” and by Sunnis setting up Shi’ites and Shi’ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.

    Not to be outdone, Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater Security has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

    One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.

    People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East.

    Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

    The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

    Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

    Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

    I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.”

    Americans are so full of themselves that they are blind to their extraordinary hypocrisy.
    The US government has broken every agreement with Russia by withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, pushing NATO to Russia’s borders, conniving to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, and buying governments in former Soviet republics and installing US military bases therein.

    When Russian President Putin finally has enough and protests, the US Secretary of State blames Putin for being difficult and restarting the cold war.

    Few Americans realize it, but they take the cake.

    International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else. The rest of the world knows that the wars are about US and Israeli hegemony and that the US and Israel are prepared to engage in whatever acts of terror are necessary to achieve hegemony.

    That is the bare fact.
    When the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US empire will come to an abrupt end. Sooner or later the rest of the world will realize this and, in an act of self-protection, dethrone the dollar.
    Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
    He can be reached at: [email protected]
    source
  • Peres sends holiday greeting to Iran

    Peres sends holiday greeting to Iran

    By JOSEF FEDERMAN – 47 minutes ago

    JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli President Shimon Peres sent a rare greeting to the people of Iran on Friday, praising what he called a great and ancient culture and saying they would be better off without their hard-line leadership.

    The greeting coincided with a video message sent by President Obama to Iran in which he said the U.S. is prepared to end years of strained relations if Tehran tones down its bellicose rhetoric.

    Peres, a Nobel peace laureate, talked of the warm ties that once existed between the two countries under the pro-U.S. shah, who was overthrown in 1979, and voiced hope that they could once again live in peace.

    “I turn to the noble Iranian nation in the name of the ancient Jewish nation and wish that it return to its rightful place among developed nations,” he said.

    But in an interview accompanying the greeting, Peres took a tougher tone toward Iran’s leaders, branding the leaders who came to power in the 1979 Islamic revolution “religious fanatics” and predicting that Iranians would eventually overthrow them.

    “I think the Iranian nation will topple these leaders. Leaders that do not serve the people will, in the end, the nation will get rid of them,” Peres said in the interview.

    “It’s such a rich country with such a rich culture,” he added. “On the one hand I look at Iran with admiration because of its history and on the other hand with sorrow because of what’s happened to it.”

    Peres’ blessing for the Persian Nowruz holiday was broadcast on the Farsi-language service of the Voice of Israel radio station. The station said the interview would air on Monday. The station claims to have several million listeners in Iran, though it was not immediately clear how many people had heard the message.

    Israel and Iran enjoyed close ties before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the U.S.-backed shah and brought to power a clerical leadership hostile to the Jewish state.

    Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and questioned whether the Holocaust occurred. Israel also accuses Iran of supporting hostile Arab militant groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and says Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

    Peres took aim at Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial. “Since when is he an expert on the Jewish Holocaust? Was he at Auschwitz? What does he know? All day he makes speeches and speeches, but they are destroying the nation. They won’t so quickly destroy us.”

    In his aired greeting, Peres turned his focus to the Iranian people and offered a Nowruz blessing.

    “Our relations with the Iranian nation knew days of prosperity, even in modern times as we shared with you our experience in agriculture, industry, development of science and medicine and we developed with you the best relations possible,” he said.

    “To our dismay, our diplomatic relations are at a low point flowing from the desires leading the current leaders of your land to act in every way possible against the state of Israel and its people, but I am confident that the day we are hoping for is not far, when the good neighborly relations and the cooperation will flourish in all fields for the welfare of our nations and for the betterment of our common future.”

    Peres spoke in Hebrew for most of the blessing, but then ended his address with a traditional Persian holiday greeting in Farsi: “May your Nowruz be a victory, and every day be Nowruz!”

    Meir Javedanfar, an independent Iranian-born analyst living in Israel, called Peres’ statements “very significant.”

    He said both Peres and Obama were aware that Iran is preparing to hold a presidential election and are hopeful that they can encourage voters to choose a new moderate leadership.

    “Iranian right-wingers thrive on demonizing the U.S. and Israel,” he said. “This is basically to counter that, with the hope that the people of Iran will vote against extremism.”

    He said Peres also might be trying to encourage the people of Iran to embrace Obama’s diplomatic overture. “We should try not to allow the provocative messages of Ahmadinejad to destroy the rapprochement,” he said.

    Farnoush Ram, a broadcaster at the Israeli radio station, said Peres’ predecessor, Iranian-born Moshe Katsav, had also sent Nowruz messages to Iran in the past, but this was the first blessing since Ahmadinejad took office.

    Source:  www.google.com, 20 March 2009

  • Israel’s dirty secrets in Gaza

    Israel’s dirty secrets in Gaza

    Army veterans reveal how they gunned down innocent Palestinian families and destroyed homes and farms

    By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

    Friday, 20 March 2009

    Palestinians' lives were seen as 'very, very less important than our soldiers'

    Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.

    The testimonies – the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military – are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.

    Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the “atmosphere” among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were “very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers”.

    A squad leader said: “At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and – I call it murder – to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn’t run away.”

    The accounts, which also describe apparently indiscriminate destruction of property, were given at a post-operation discussion by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel. The transcript of the session in front of the head of the course – details from which were published by the newspaper Haaretz – prompted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit yesterday to announce a military police investigation into the claims. Haaretz said the airing of the “dirty secrets” would make it more difficult for Israelis to dismiss the claims as Palestinian propaganda. The course principal, Danny Zamir, told the newspaper that after being “shocked” by the testimonies on 13 February he told the IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi he “feared a serious moral failure” in the IDF.

    In one account, an infantry squad leader describes how troops released a family who had been held in a room of their house for several days. He said: “The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay… The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him. He shot them straight away. I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to, the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.”

    A second squad leader, who described the killing of the elderly woman, says he argued with his commander over loose rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, soldiers had complained that “we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.” The squad leader said: “To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics.”

    Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, said: “I say to you that from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined.”

    But Israeli human rights organisations, including B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called for an independent investigation and complained that the military police inquiry had only been announced after Haaretz published the story, “three weeks after the relevant materials reached the Chief of the General Staff. This tardiness follows a pattern of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes”.

    Amos Harel, the paper’s respected military correspondent who broke the story, wrote that Mr Zamir was sentenced in 1990 for refusing to guard a settlers’ ceremony at Joseph’s tomb in the West Bank. But he added that a reading of the transcript shows that Mr Zamir “acts out of a deep concern for the spirit of the IDF”.

    In their own words: Soldiers’ stories

    Squad leader Aviv

    “At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and to ascend floor by floor and – I call it murder – to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn’t run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible, despite my low rank, to change it. In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them ‘you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn’t will be killed’.”

    Soldier Ram

    “There was an order to free the [confined] families. The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn’t understand and turned left. [Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof that they were being set free and that everything was okay and he should hold fire. You can say that he acted as he was supposed to, in accordance with the orders. The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no one was to be allowed to cross. He fired directly at them. I don’t know if he fired at their legs but in the end he killed them.”

    Source:  www.independent.co.uk, 20 March 2009

  • Poor Richard’s Report

    Poor Richard’s Report

    Turkey, U.S.: Strengthening Ties as Ankara Rises
    March 19, 2009 | 1837 GMT ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty ImagesTurkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoganSummary
    U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Turkey on April 6-7 and meet with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The United States and Turkey have many areas of mutual interest, including Iraq, Middle Eastern diplomatic efforts, Iran and Central Asia. Obama’s visit indicates that his administration recognizes Turkey’s growing prominence, and it gives the United States a chance to coordinate policy with a rising power.

    Analysis
    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed late March 18 that U.S. President Barack Obama will be visiting Turkey on April 6-7. In an interview with Turkish news channel Kanal 7, Erdogan said he had invited Obama to attend a meeting of the Alliance of Civilizations initiative in Istanbul on April 7, but “did not expect” Obama to arrive a day early for an official state visit to Ankara. “Combining the two occasions is very meaningful for us,” he added. Obama’s trip to Turkey will follow a visit to London for the G-20 summit on the global financial crisis, a NATO summit in Strasbourg, France, and a trip to Prague to meet with EU leaders.

    Obama’s decision to visit Turkey this early in the game highlights his administration’s recognition of Turkey’s growing prominence in the region. The Turks have woken up after 90 years of post-Ottoman hibernation and are in the process of rediscovering a sphere of influence extending far beyond the Anatolian Peninsula. The Americans, on the other hand, are in the process of drawing down their presence in the Middle East in order to free up U.S. military capabilities to address pressing needs in Afghanistan. With the Turks stepping forward and the Americans stepping back, there are a number of issues of common interest that Obama and Erdogan will need to discuss.

    The first order of business is Iraq. The United States is putting its exit strategy into motion and is looking to Turkey to serve as an exit route for U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq. The Turks would not have a problem with granting the United States such access, but they also want to make sure that U.S. withdrawal plans will not interfere with Turkey’s intentions of keeping Iraqi Kurdistan in check. With key Kurdish leader and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani retiring soon and Kurdish demands over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk intensifying, the Turks want to make clear to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq that Ankara promptly will shut down any attempts to expand Kurdish autonomy. Turkey will not hesitate to use the issue of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters hiding out in northern Ir aq as a pretext for future military incursions should the need arise to pressure the KRG in a more forceful way, but such tactics could run into complications if the United States intends to withdraw the bulk of its forces through northern Iraq. Therefore, the decision on where to base U.S. troops during the withdrawal process will be a political one, and one that will have to address Turkish concerns over the Kurds. Washington likely will see this as a reasonable price to pay, as it has other problems to handle.

    Related Special Topic Page
    Turkey’s Re-Emergence
    Beyond Iraq, the United States is looking to Turkey as the Muslim regional heavyweight to take the lead in handling some of the knottier issues in the Middle East. The Israeli-Syrian peace talks that went public in 2008 were a Turkish initiative. These negotiations are now in limbo, with the Israelis still working to form a new government, but the Turks are looking to revive them in the near future. Turkey, Israel, the United States and the Arab states all share an interest in bringing Syria into a Western alliance structure, with the aim of depriving Iran of its leverage in the Levant. However, the Syrians are setting an equally high price for their cooperation: Syrian domination over Lebanon. These negotiations are packed with potential deal breakers, but Turkey intends to take on the challenge in the interest of securing its southern flank.

    Iran is another critical area where the United States and Turkey see eye to eye. The fall of Saddam Hussein and the rise of the Shia in Iraq have given Iran a platform for projecting influence in the Arab world. But the Turks far outpace the Iranians in a geopolitical contest and will be instrumental in keeping Iranian expansionist goals in check. Erdogan’s outburst over Israel’s Gaza offensive was just one of many ways Turkey has been working to assert its regional leadership, build up its credibility among Sunnis in the Arab world and override Iranian attempts to reach beyond its borders. At the same time, the Turks carry weight with the Iranians, who view Turkey as a fellow great empire of the past and non-Arab partner in the Middle East. Washington may not necessarily need the Turks to mediate in its rocky negotiations with Iran, but it will rely heavily on Turkish clout in the region to help put the Iranians in their place.

    Some problems may arise, however, when U.S.-Turkish talks venture beyond the Middle East and enter areas where the Turkish and Russian spheres of influence overlap. Turkey’s influence extends into Central Asia and deep into the Caucasus, where the Turks have a strong foothold in Azerbaijan and ties to Georgia, and are in the process of patching things up with the Armenians. As the land bridge between Europe and Asia, Turkey is also the key non-Russian energy transit hub for the European market, and through its control of the Bosporus, it is the gatekeeper to the Black Sea. In each of these areas, the Turks bump into the Russians, another resurgent power that is on a tight timetable for extracting key concessions from the United States on a range of issues that revolve around Russia’s core imperative of protecting its former Soviet periphery from Western meddling.

    The U.S. administration and the Kremlin have been involved in intense negotiations over these demands. Washington is still sorting out which concessions it can make in return for Russian cooperation in allowing the United States access to Central Asia for supply routes to Afghanistan, and in applying pressure on Iran. As part of these negotiations, Obama will be meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the G-20 summit and later in the summer in Moscow. Though it is still unclear just how much the United States is willing to give the Russians at this juncture — and how flexible the Turks will be in challenging Russia — Washington wants to make sure its allies, like Turkey, are on the same page.

    But as STRATFOR has discussed in depth, Russia and Turkey now have more reason to cooperate than collide, and recent diplomatic traffic between Moscow and Ankara certainly reflects this reality. In areas where the United States will want to apply pressure on Russia, such as on energy security for the Europeans, the Turks likely will resist rocking the boat with Moscow. The last thing Turkey wants at this point is to give Russia a reason to politicize its trade relationship with Ankara, cause trouble for the Turks in the Caucasus or meddle in Turkey’s Middle Eastern backyard. In short, there are real limits to what the United States can expect from Turkey in its strategy against Russia.

    Obama and Erdogan evidently will have plenty to talk about when they meet in Ankara. Though the United States and Turkey have much to sort out regarding Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia, this visit will give Obama the stage to formally recognize Turkey’s regional prowess and demonstrate a U.S. understanding of Turkey’s growing independence. Washington can see that the Turks are already brimming with confidence in conducting their regional affairs, and can expect some bumps down the road when interests collide. But the sooner the Americans can start coordinating policy with a resurgent power like Turkey, the better equipped Washington will be for conducting negotiations in other parts of the globe.

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  • US-Russian partnership will end shield row

    US-Russian partnership will end shield row

    Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:11:00 GMT

    Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski believes if the US and Russia work together they would eliminate the need to install a defense shield in central Europe against the "Iranian threat."

    A former US national security adviser says the US-Russian “cooperation” on Iran would lead to the shelving of a defense shield plan in Europe.

    In an interview with a Polish daily, President Jimmy Carter’s advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said pushing the “reset button” in Russia-US relations is likely to change the situation created by Iran’s nuclear activities.

    He added that if the US and Russia join forces to mount pressure on Iran it would reduce or even eliminate the need for Washington to deploy a missile shield in Central Europe.

    Russian daily Kommersant cited White House sources as saying earlier last week that President Barack Obama had made a proposal to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev asking him to change position on Iran in exchange for a halt to the US missile shield plan.

    Plans for the installation of anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic have contributed to the deterioration of White House-Kremlin relations over the past few years.

    The missile shield plan has rankled Moscow, as it sees the system as a threat to its national security. President Obama has addressed the Russian concern by saying that he wants to press the “reset button” and build better relations with Moscow.

    The White House under former President George W. Bush said the missile defense shield is necessary to counter a threat posed by “rogue states”, such as Iran.

    Russia, however, says it will not be taken in by the “missile threat” excuse.

    “No sensible person believes in fairy tales about the Iranian missile threat, and that thousands of kilometers from Tehran on the coast of the Baltic Sea, it is necessary to station a missile interceptor system,” Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said in November 2008.

    The US, Israel and their European allies — Britain, France and Germany — claim that Iran is developing a military nuclear program.

    Tehran, however, denies the charge that it is seeking to build a bomb and argues that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – to which it is a signatory – allows for a domestic, civilian nuclear industry.

    CS/HGH

    Source: www.presstv.ir, 16 Mar 2009

  • Obama adviser urges talks with Hamas

    Obama adviser urges talks with Hamas

    Paul Volcker, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, has urged him to break with US policy and open talks with Hamas in order to test the militant group’s willingness to join a unified Palestinian government.

    By Alex Spillius in Washington
    Last Updated: 4:19PM GMT 15 Mar 2009

    Paul Volcker has urged talks with Hamas

    Mr Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who was picked by the president to head his new economic recovery advisory board, signed a letter with nine other Washington veterans and senior ex-officials urging him to open dialogue.

    Other signatories of the letter, delivered to the president days before he took office, include Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first George Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who performed the same role under Jimmy Carter.

    The group is expected to be granted an audience at the White House as early as this week to make their case that lines of communication should be opened with the group that is blacklisted as a terrorist organization and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians.

    They are likely to make a forceful case given their personal experience of tortuous Middle East negotiations. “I see no reason not to talk to Hamas,” Mr Scowcroft told the Boston Globe. “The main gist is that you need to push hard on the Palestinian peace process. Don’t move it to end of your agenda and say you have too much to do.”

    Mr Obama has made peace in the Middle East a central goal of his presidency. Within days of taking office he appointed former senator George Mitchell, a heavy-hitting veteran of the Northern Ireland peace process, as a special envoy to the region.

    Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, made an early trip to the Middle East and swiftly held out an olive branch to Iran-backed Syria, sending in senior diplomats for talks.

    Some in Washington see a rare opportunity to open talks with Hamas now that the group is discussing a unity government with Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian faction. Hamas was elected to power in Gaza in 2007 and has been shunned by the US for its refusal to renounce violence or recognize Israel’s legitimacy.

    Source:  www.telegraph.co.uk, 15 Mar 2009