William B. Quandt, Edward R. Stettinius Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia in the United States, spoke Tuesday on a wide range of political issues of particular concern to the Mideeast region, including the Arab peace initiative. Addressing an audience at Jeddah's College of Business Administration, Quandt emphasized that his views on the peace initiative were his own, and in no way represented an official stance. “Secretary (Hillary) Clinton mentioned the Arab initiative in positive terms, so we know about it, we know it's there, and I think we see it as a positive factor in the equation,” he said. “The only issue, and this is my personal view, is that the content of it is fine, but it's a very brief statement, there's not very much detail to it and it doesn't have any mechanism to translate the principles into an active form of diplomacy.” “Nobody on the Arab side has said, ‘we will take this and bring it directly into the negotiations and start working out the detail”, and I think I understand why,” Quandt continued. “It's premature. We're not at the point yet where we can see the outline of the overall agreement. But at some point if this is going to be an important part of the future diplomacy, there has to be a way of translating the general principles that reflect the consensus of all Arab countries, into an action program.” The practical application of those principles signals the beginnings of difficulties, Quandt suggests, giving examples of what in the future may prove to be some of the sticking points. “If Israel does agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights and makes peace with Syria and if they recognize the Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and recognize Palestinian rights, what happens next?” Quandt asks. “Is there at that point contact between Israelis and other Arab states to talk about how they normalize ties, or does all that wait until much later? And so there are questions about how this general plan could become an operational plan.”
