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Obama Administration Overhauls U.S. Mideast Policy

[VOA News] Meredith Buel - President Obama has been in office less than two months, but he has already dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special envoy George Mitchell, and other diplomats from the State Department and White House to the Middle East. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, who also visited the region, said, "We need to fundamentally re-conceptualize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a regional problem that demands a regional solution. The challenges that we face there - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Middle East peace process - form an interconnected web that requires an integrated approach." Sen. Kerry says there has been a tectonic shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East, with the rise of Iran creating an unprecedented willingness among moderate Arab nations to work with Israel. "There is a new reality - moderate Arab countries and Israel alike are actually more worried together about Iran than they are about each other. As a result, they are now cooperating in ways that were unimaginable just a couple of years ago." Robert Malley, the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group, says, "If I were advising the administration I would say you could work on the margins - Palestinian reconciliation, reaching out to Syria, restarting Syrian-Israeli negotiations, reaching out to Iran. I think by changing that landscape you may do more to help move towards a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than by focusing on a two-state solution right now." Malley says current realities on the ground diminish hopes of quick progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2009-03-12 06:00:00
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