Big Turnout, Small Result
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
December 3, 2007 - 4:18pm

THEY almost didn't make it, but in the last hour Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, agreed on a joint statement. Four months of preliminary talks had failed to produce what Mr Abbas and Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, had hoped to brandish at this week's peace summit in Annapolis: an agreement to predetermine some aspects of the final-status deal that would ultimately create a Palestinian state next to Israel. In the end, Ms Rice had to settle for less, but the Palestinians and Israelis did agree two things.

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Bush Draws Skepticism With Hands-off Approach To Mideast
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Paul Richter - December 3, 2007 - 4:13pm

President Bush last week laid out an American role in the upcoming Mideast peace talks that challenges the accumulated wisdom of former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III and Presidents Carter and Clinton. But sticking to his plan, which calls for a carefully limited U.S. role, may be harder than the president thinks, say current and former diplomats who have wrestled with the issue.

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No More Time To Waste
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Ami Ayalon - (Opinion) November 30, 2007 - 6:04pm

A motley coalition of cynics and extremists were quick to write off the Annapolis peace conference as a waste of time. The best way for Israel to prove them wrong is to show that it knows there is no more time to waste.

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Bush's Half-hearted Summit
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Der Spiegel
by Ulrike Putz And Gregor Peter Schmitz - November 30, 2007 - 5:45pm

It was an elegant setting for the luncheon hosted by the Israel Project one week ago. Guests at the National Press Club in Washington picked at salmon on a bed of salad, forks clinked gently against plates. The hostess spoke quietly of peace and understanding. But then David Wurmser showed up.

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Much To Be Modest About
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
(Editorial) November 30, 2007 - 5:41pm

BETTER than nothing. For now, that is the most that can be said of the new Arab-Israeli “peace process” George Bush inaugurated in Annapolis on November 27th. After weeks of negotiation, the Israeli and Palestinian delegations did at the last minute approve 437 words for the American president to read out, but this was the sort of declaration that makes the phrase “lowest common denominator” sound generous.

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Why Annapolis Worked
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
(Editorial) November 30, 2007 - 4:54pm

In the end, the Annapolis peace conference proved to be far less than the cataclysmic, watershed event that its sharpest critics had predicted. It unfolded, to everyone’s surprise, with very little upheaval. And for that reason, it might yet turn out to be far more than the pointless flop anticipated by the world-weary wise men.

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Summit Surpasses Low Expectations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
(Editorial) November 30, 2007 - 4:52pm

It started out like an office party that no one wanted to attend. Everyone felt obliged to put in an appearance in Annapolis, even though the first Middle East confab in six years wasn't billed as a peace conference, a forum for negotiation or, really, much more than a photo-op. Yet once the leaders were all there, with the TV cameras pouring an intoxicating adrenaline cocktail, the pressure to be seen to do something about the seminal conflict of our time couldn't be ignored.

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Peace Talks Are Likely To Fail, Just As The 'road Map' Did
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) November 29, 2007 - 5:09pm

The Annapolis conference on Tuesday was full of lofty rhetoric, intriguing new promises, a few bold commitments, and a tantalizing cast of characters - alongside plenty of rehashed rhetoric, rigid positions, and regurgitated, failed diplomatic mechanisms. It left us with as many questions as answers about whether this was a serious Arab-Israeli peace-making endeavor, or a hoax garnished with Chesapeake Bay clam cakes.

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Still Waiting For Peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Leader - (Special Report) November 29, 2007 - 5:03pm

Serious negotiations do not normally take place at international conferences. They happen before or after them. If negotiations beforehand have been fruitful, a conference is a venue to publicise and formalise what has been agreed, or sometimes to settle one or two very difficult matters beyond the competence of the advance teams. On that test, Annapolis has not been a success. Palestinians and Israelis could not agree on a detailed joint document to put before the meeting.

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Us Takes Ownership Of Peace Process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
by Harvey Morris - November 29, 2007 - 5:02pm

When George W. Bush this week read out the words of what historians will no doubt come to call the Annapolis Declaration, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders peered over his shoulder as if trying to read for the first time the terms of the contract they had just signed. Low down in the fine print was a clause that handed the US president ownership of the peace process as monitor and judge of their performance during the remaining year of his term.

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