Clinton Fears French Conference on the Middle East Is Not “Productive”

On Monday, June 6, Hillary Clinton, chief United States diplomat, had a mixed reaction to the French idea of a conference on peace in the Middle East, citing the need for major “preparatory work” and concluding that the United States would “wait and see.”

“The idea of any gathering, conference or meeting has to be linked to a willingness by the parties to resume negotiating,” the chief U.S. diplomat said during a news conference with her French counterpart Alain Juppe.

“We strongly support a return to negotiations, but we do not think that it would be productive for there to be a conference about returning to negotiations,” she continued, “There has to be a return to negotiations, which will take a lot of persuasion and preliminary work in order to set up a productive meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians.” The Secretary of State concluded, “Right now, we’re still in a wait-and-see attitude because we don’t yet have an insurance form either party that they would return to negotiations.”

Juppé “Rather pleasantly surprised.”

Commenting on his tour of the region these last few days and his meeting with Mrs. Clinton, Alain Juppé is optimistic. “I am rather pleasantly surprised because the Palestinians have reacted positively, the Israelis did not say no and the Secretary of State said ‘let’s wait and see,'” he said.

On June 2, France unveiled an outline of an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference from now until the end of July on the basis of the parameters set by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton also reiterated U.S. concerns about the reconciliation between the Fatah [Party] of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which rules in Gaza. She urged Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist and emphasized that, at the least, the “general objective” of a negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians would be questioned.

According to Alain Juppé, the Secretary of State should meet successively in the afternoon with a Palestinian delegation comprising of the negotiator Saëb Erakat and the spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, as well as the Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho.