Officials in the White House said Sunday that they had tentatively set U.S. President George W. Bush's speech unveiling his administration's new Middle East policy for Monday, but said events on the ground could force a change again.
U.S. officials said the president's aides proposed that he deliver his address on the afternoon, but Bush himself had not made a final decision as of late Sunday.
The president intends to leave early Tuesday afternoon for a major-nation summit in Canada, where leaders are seen as eager for a U.S. policy declaration.
Bush is to travel to Newark, New Jersey on Monday morning, to tour the Port Elizabeth marine terminal complex and pitch his proposal for a new cabinet Department of Homeland Security. U.S. officials have said bolstering security at U.S. ports is essential to protecting against terrorism.
The president is to return to Washington early in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, according to AFP, US senators expressed misgivings about prospects for peace in the Middle East, with one prospective presidential candidate attacking Bush's handling of the crisis as a "catastrophic mistake" from day one.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, 58, a Vietnam War hero with White House ambitions, said the Bush administration broke a long tradition of US presidential engagement in the Middle East.
"To start with, this administration, from day one, I think, made a catastrophic mistake," Kerry, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC television.
He said Bush broke 30 years of presidential engagement in the Middle East by adopting a hands-off policy in his early months in office, contributing significantly to the "dilemma of the Middle East." He said Bush has "sent the most extraordinary mixed messages," offering the green light to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to retaliate against Palestinian attacks and then seeking to rein in Israeli action.
"The next moment they say, 'We're not going to deal with Arafat.' And then they say, 'We're going to deal with Arafat.' Then they say, 'We're going to have no discussions while there's violence.' Then they say, 'Well, maybe we can have discussions while there is violence going on,'" said Kerry, adding: "There is no continuity, there is no fundamental plan."
"They sent mixed signals to every side, if any signals at all," he said.
Senator Bob Graham, the Democrat who chairs the intelligence committee, said that he was deeply concerned about prospects for peace in the Middle East. "It is a very, very serious time in the history of the Middle East, and I think it's going to require the strongest US and international community diplomatic efforts in order to avoid the explosion," he said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
