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opinion:
our view
Powell's
mission not enough
Secretary of State Colin Powell's mission to the Middle East
is winding down and it appears that it may have been merely
futile.
Powell is trying
to put together a conference of Middle East leaders but Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is demanding that Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat be excluded from any peace conference.
Sharon promised
President Bush that he will slowly begin a pullout of Israeli
forces from some West Bank towns but an end to the Israeli
incursion is still far out of sight.
Israel is showing
no sign of trying to reach any sort of peace any time soon.
Sharon's attempts to exclude Arafat from the peace process
are entirely counter-productive.
It almost seems
that no one really wants to reach any sort of peace. This
is a frightening proposition.
The United States
took on the role of worldwide peacekeeper long ago. The United
States, alongside the United Nations has been integral in
the most important peace processes of the 20th Century.
The Bush administration
is not living up to the lofty reputation imparted on the United
States many years ago.
Now is the time
for the Bush administration to put its money where its mouth
is. If peace is going to be reached in the Middle East then
the United States must make much more of an effort to ensure
that peace.
Powell's mission
to Israel and other Middle East countries has brought about
nowhere near the results that are necessary at the current
time.
Bush must put his
foot down and really work towards a peace agreement between
Israel and Palestine. The United States is inarguably the
greatest and strongest country in the world and a responsibility
to the stability of the world comes with that title.
We feel that the
time has come for Bush to stop twiddling his thumbs and pull
out all the stops on ensuring a meaningful peace in Israel.
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