Less than 24 hours after the Middle East Quartet issued a statement
calling for a resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, the new
Egyptian government, speaking on behalf of the nonaligned movement, doused it
with cold water.
Mohamed Kamel Amr, Egypt's foreign minister, said in
a speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday that "we have witnessed
yesterday another failure by the Quartet to come up with a balanced vision to
achieve the goal that we all know and approve of yet differ on how to realize
it."
It remained unclear whether the Egyptian statement
represented the start of a major move by Palestine supporters to undercut the
peace talks, or was simply pre-negotiation posturing designed to bolster the
Palestinians' quest for a better deal.
But the Quartet statement's failure to include a clear
framework -- or parameters -- for talks, and the absence of a call for an end
to settlements has infuriated key powers, including Russia, which is a member
of the Quartet, and France, which is represented by the European Union envoy, Catherine Ashton. Some diplomats said
that Russia had at one point during the talks threatened to pull out of the
discussions.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy meanwhile was said
to be furious that Ashton had refused to fully brief the French in the midst of
the high-pressure talks and that she had failed to add stronger reference to
the parameters to the statement. Last week, he pre-empted
Ashton by presenting her proposal as his own. But after the deal was
struck, France's foreign minister issued a statement saying they were pleased
with the direction the Quartet was pursuing.
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