THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle
East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international
unity.
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush
Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a
decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the
United Nations.
He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges,
advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and
Germany.
"You've got to reach out to the other person. You've got to convince them
that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity," he said.
The former President's comments reflect unease among the Bush family and
its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international
opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold.
Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family
steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.
Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at
Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came
close to conceding that opponents of his son's case against President
Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate
cause for concern.
He said that the key question of how many weapons of mass destruction Iraq
held "could be debated". The case against Saddam was "less clear" than in
1991, when Mr Bush Sr led an international coalition to expel invading
Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Objectives were "a little fuzzier today", he added.
After the Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr steered Israel and its Arab neighbours to
the Madrid conference, a stepping stone to the historic Israeli-Palestinian
Oslo accords, in much the same way that the present President has talked
about the removal of Saddam as opening the way to a wider peace in the region.
In an ominous warning for his son, Mr Bush Sr said that he would have been
able to achieve nothing if he had jeopardised future relations by ignoring
the UN. "The Madrid conference would never have happened if the
international coalition that fought together in Desert Storm had exceeded
the UN mandate and gone on its own into Baghdad after Saddam and his forces."
Also drawing on the lessons of 1991, he said that it was imperative to mend
fences with allies immediately, rather than waiting until after a war. He
had been infuriated with the decision of King Hussein of Jordan to side
with Saddam rather than the US, but while criticising the Jordanian leader
in public and freezing $41 million in US aid, he also passed word to King
Hussein that he understood his domestic tensions.
Mr Bush Jr, who is said never to forget even relatively minor slights, has
alarmed analysts with the way in which he has allowed senior Administration
figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, aggressively to
criticise France and Germany.
There are, however, signs that Mr Bush Sr's message may be getting through.
Father and son talk regularly and it was, in part, pressure from Mr Bush
Sr's foreign policy coterie, that helped to persuade the President to go to
the UN last September.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-605441,00.html
