Top officials urge dialogue with Hamas
By Bryan Bender and Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - Nine former senior
current adviser are urging the Obama administration to
talk with leaders of Hamas to determine whether the
militant group can be persuaded to disarm and join a
peaceful Palestinian government, a major departure from
current
The bipartisan group, which includes economic recovery
adviser Paul A. Volcker and former national security
advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, made
the recommendation in a letter handed to Obama days
before he took office, according to Scowcroft.
The group is preparing to meet this weekend to decide
when to release a report outlining a proposed
for talks aimed at bringing all Palestinian factions
into the Mid east peace process, according to Henry
Siegman, the president of the US/Middle East Project,
who brought the former officials together and said the
White House promised the group an opportunity to make
its case in person to Obama.
Talking to Hamas, which the State Department has
designated a terrorist organization, would mark a
dramatic reversal for the
talks, Hamas must renounce violence, recognize
and agree to all previous agreements signed by Palestinian negotiators.
"I see no reason not to talk to Hamas," said Scowcroft,
who was national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush.
Siegman said the letter, which was handed to Obama by
Volcker but has not been made public, said the
administration should "at least explore the
possibility" that Hamas, which took control of the
Palestinian territory of Gaza after elections in 2006,
might be willing to transition into a purely political
party and join with its rival, Fatah, which holds the
Palestinian presidency in the West Bank.
The White House did not respond immediately last night
to requests for comment on the letter. Volcker was
unavailable for comment.
Both the West Bank and
1967. Since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Hamas,
which stands for the Islamic Resistance Movement, has
launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israeli
cities and has taken credit for suicide bombings
against Israeli civilians.
Last fall,
against Hamas in
Palestinian casualties.
Siegman and Scowcroft said the letter urged Obama to
formulate a clear American position on how the peace
talks should proceed and what the specific goals should be.
"The main gist is that you need to push hard on the
Palestinian peace process," Scowcroft said in an
interview. "Don't move it to end of your agenda and say
you have too much to do. And the
position, not just hold their coats while they sit down."
Along with Scowcroft, Volcker, and Brzezinski, who was
national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter,
signatories included former House International
Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat;
former United Nations ambassador Thomas Pickering from
the first Bush administration; former World Bank
president James Wolfensohn; former
representative in the Ford administration
Theodore Sorensen, former special counsel to President
John F. Kennedy; and former Republican senators Chuck
Hagel and Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Meanwhile, other leading foreign policy officials in
the
deeper international engagement with Hamas.
Michael Ancram, a Conservative Party member of the
British Parliament, who has held several meetings with
Hamas leaders over the past two years, is urging the
British government to engage in "exploratory dialogue" with Hamas.
"There is a chance of a process," Ancram said in an
interview. "Either they deliver, in which you move
forward, or they don't deliver, in which case nothing is lost."
But many other
meeting with Hamas would set a bad precedent of
negotiating with terrorists and could also undermine
more moderate Palestinian leaders, including
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the
leader of the Fatah party.
Chuck
security adviser, said in a recent interview that talks
with Hamas would be a waste of time. "Maybe someday
Hamas would moderate, but until then . . . I don't
think there is much to talk about," he said. "I think
they [the Obama administration] are going to find very
quickly that the reason the Bush administration didn't
do anything for seven years was there wasn't anything to do."
The recommendations in the letter will be laid out in
more detail in the coming days, Siegman said, adding
that the letter itself will not be released until the
signatories have a chance to meet with the president.
In the early days of his presidency, Obama has widened
the scope of voices advising him on how to approach the
Israel-Palestinian peace process, including reaching
out to Arab-American groups.
He has also named a special envoy, former senator
George Mitchell of
Hillary Rodham Clinton and National Security Adviser
James L. Jones - who served as special envoy to the
playing primary roles.
Who will have Obama's ear among the many
specialists remains a burning question.
"Somebody is going to coordinate the emissaries and
coordinators," Scowcroft said.
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