Rice At Work

Wolfson: Around-The-World Diplomatic Efforts Pay Off

(CBS)  CBS News reporter Charles Wolfson is a former Tel Aviv bureau chief for CBS News, who now covers the State Department.

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“She judged the time was right to break the log jam,” said a senior aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, explaining why she stayed in Jerusalem longer than expected. Rice pushed Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to conclude a deal they’d been working on for months.

It could have ended badly for Rice but she got what she came for.

Rice used her close relationship with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his chief negotiator, Dov Weisglass, to get the Israelis to make concessions on control of the border between Gaza and Egypt. Israel relinquished control of a border they had been in charge of since 1967.

Sharon’s government also promised other steps to ease the passage of Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and to make it easier for them to get their agricultural produce to markets inside Israel.

In terms of Middle East diplomacy, Rice’s effort was neither minor nor a huge breakthrough but still it is important on several levels. First, the deal infuses momentum into a situation that was stuck and in danger of sliding backwards.

Second, the solution offers the promise to Palestinians of much greater control over Gaza and more freedom of movement than they previously enjoyed.

Finally, it was something tangible Rice and others who worked on the deal could point to, not only as a diplomatic success but as a political gamble that paid off.

As with so much else between Israelis and Palestinians, however, if President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority cannot or will not control terrorist activity against Israelis the deal will amount to yet another example of promise unrealized.

Rice began her around-the-world diplomatic efforts a week ago, making an unannounced stop in Iraq. It was no accident that her appearances in Mosul and Baghdad came just weeks before Iraqis go to the polls for the third time this year, this time to ratify the provisional constitution approved in October and to elect members for a permanent National Assembly.

In Iraq, Rice put her emphasis on persuading Sunni leaders to stay active in Iraq’s experiment in democracy, which is being strongly pushed by the Bush administration. Rice came to encourage, nudge — even to prod — the Sunnis to play a role, although their minority status in the country is unlikely ever to restore them to the power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein.

From Iraq, Rice moved on to Bahrain where she represented the administration’s efforts to get civil society more firmly entrenched in Middle Eastern countries. The goal is for more political and social reform, including greater rights for women. Plans were also launched to establish a fund based in the region with the aim of making it easier for small businesses to get loans, especially those run by women.

Rice was just warming up for the task which lay ahead in Jerusalem. Although success in Iraq is more important to the Bush administration’s long term goals, Rice could only do so much given her short stay there.

With movement so difficult inside the country because of security concerns, Rice did what she could — she was on the ground for less than 12 hours. She left after cheering on American diplomats and military personnel who risk their lives daily in pursuit of a strategy that calls for democratic government and standing up an Iraqi army capable of controlling the country’s many rival ethnic, tribal and religious factions.

As Rice reached Israel for what was her fourth trip to the region since becoming secretary of state, she evaluated the situation, especially the call for more pressure from special envoy James Wolfensohn, and decided, according to one senior official, “this should be doable.”

Rice’s senior advisor, James Wilkinson, says of his boss: “she chooses her moments carefully, but when she weighs in, she weighs in.” As if to prove that, Rice became central to closing the deal herself, staying an extra day in Jerusalem and pulling a virtual all-nighter before getting both the Israelis and Palestinians to agree to the deal.

Having power and being able to exert it are not the same thing. Rice’s willingness to risk failure, which would have attached to her as well as to Sharon and Abbas, showed she is not afraid to get down into the diplomatic trenches.

While getting her message across to the parties to put the final touches on the deal, Rice took a few hours out for a quick side trip to Amman. She called on King Abdullah to express her condolences for the lives of Jordanians lost in last week’s terrorist attacks on three hotels in Amman. Solidarity was her message and Rice wanted to show an ally that the United States stood beside them in the war on terrorism.

Back in Jerusalem, at the press conference announcing the deal, James Wolfensohn, the frustrated envoy representing the international community and the man who had done most of the groundwork but who couldn’t close the deal, summed up the importance of Rice’s participation in the final hours: “To push it over the edge, one needs not envoys but secretaries of state.”

With Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian issues behind her, at least for the moment, Rice’s week at work moved on to Asia, where she met with fellow foreign ministers from Pacific rim countries.

Some of the talk was on trade but the most pressing issues were about the status of talks over dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program and the possibility of the region — and perhaps the world — facing a worldwide outbreak of avian flu. Rice was briefed by her own experts and then met with ministers from China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

All that before her week on center stage ended as President Bush arrived in Puson, South Korea, for a heads of state meeting on the same issues. Not exactly a time for rest but certainly enough time to catch her breath and wait for the other actors to play out the roles just agreed upon. Secretary Rice will be watching.