Amid Impasse in Peace Negotiations, America’s Chief Middle East Envoy Resigns

 

On his second day in office in January 2009, President Obama appointed Mr. Mitchell, signaling the administration’s desire to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But despite more than two years of shuttle diplomacy, the two sides appear further apart today than at any time in years.

“His deep commitment to resolving conflict and advancing democracy has contributed immeasurably to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security,” Mr. Obama said in a written statement announcing the resignation and referring to American support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The news of Mr. Mitchell’s departure, while not a surprise, broke at an awkward time. His resignation is effective next Friday, the same day Mr. Obama is to meet at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, with whom the president has had an icy, if polite, relationship. Yet the date on Mr. Mitchell’s brief resignation letter, which the White House released late Friday afternoon, is April 6, five weeks ago.

In the letter, Mr. Mitchell, 77, said he had initially agreed to do what the president called “the toughest job imaginable” for only two years. He largely abandoned his diplomatic efforts after a failed push last year to persuade Israel to freeze the construction of settlements in territories claimed by the Palestinians.

Mr. Mitchell last visited the region in December, even as divisions between the Israelis and Palestinians hardened and hostilities deepened. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed his deputy, David Hale, to take over as acting envoy.

Mr. Mitchell’s resignation comes at a time when the Middle East has been transformed by popular uprisings that have toppled aging autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt, prompted a NATO-led air war against Libya and led to harsh crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain.

The White House has announced that Mr. Obama plans to address the region in the wake of the upheaval — and the death of Osama bin Laden — in a speech on Thursday at the State Department. Coming a day before Mr. Netanyahu’s visit, it could set the stage for further disagreements. Mr. Obama was also scheduled to meet Tuesday with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

“We remain committed to peace in the Middle East and to building on George’s hard work and progress toward achieving this goal,” Mr. Obama said, though officials have said it is unlikely that the president will outline new American proposals to break the impasse, either in his speech or in his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu.

For his part, the Israeli prime minister is to visit Washington in search of support for heading off Palestinian plans to seek a vote in September at the United Nations General Assembly. The Palestinians hope for recognition of an independent Palestine with territory that includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu has made it clear that the turmoil in the region has heightened his country’s security concerns, making a negotiated peace an unacceptably risky gamble for now.

Last week, the two rival Palestinian factions, Fatah on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo, prompting a fierce denunciation from Israel, which says it cannot negotiate with Hamas, a group designated by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization.

American and European diplomats have insisted that any Palestinian government that included Hamas had to accept basic principles laid out by negotiators over the years, including renouncing violence and recognizing Israel. Mrs. Clinton, in Rome last week, did not slam the door on negotiations with the Palestinians that would include Hamas, but there seemed to be no intention by either side to resume substantive talks.

In Israel, the reaction to Mr. Mitchell’s departure mirrored the current state of the conflict, with Palestinian and Israeli officials blaming each other for his failure to broker a deal, though they joined in praising his work.

Zalman Shoval, a special envoy for Mr. Netanyahu who focuses on relations with the United States, said Mr. Mitchell had “made a major effort to try to move peace between Israel and the Palestinians” and deserved gratitude. “But at the end of the day, his efforts were undermined by the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations.”

Nabil Shaath, who heads Fatah’s foreign affairs department in the West Bank, said that it was Israeli behavior that needed to change. “The man was not given any support and he failed,” Mr. Shaath said of Mr. Mitchell in a telephone interview. “I don’t really blame him. He found himself without any initiative or ability to move ahead. He found himself doing a futile job. I liked the man. He is honest and hard-working, with lots of experience.”

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

 

U.S. Envoy Sees ‘Backsliding’ Of Human Rights in China

BEIJING — The chief United States representative to human rights discussions with China offered a cheerless portrait of those talks after their conclusion on Thursday, saying the United States was worried by “a serious backsliding” of freedoms in China and at loggerheads with Beijing officials over many aspects of the issue.

“Our disagreements are profound,” the envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Michael H. Posner, said at a news conference at the United States Embassy here in Beijing, even as he expressed optimism that China’s rights situation would improve over time.

In the two days of talks this week, however, Mr. Posner indicated that Chinese officials offered few if any concrete responses to American queries about the conditions of the human rights and legal activists who have been seized or imprisoned by Chinese authorities. And he said that the talks, while “respectful in tone,” were colored with new seriousness on both sides by the perception that disagreements between the nations had widened.

“I don’t think anybody stood up and said, ‘Oh yeah, things have gotten worse,’ except me,” he said. But, he added, “there’s no question that the atmosphere is different, because the facts are different.”

Since the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October, Chinese authorities have detained, imprisoned or harassed hundreds of critics, lawyers, bloggers, writers and other gadflies deemed a threat to the state’s security. The pace of detentions and harassment accelerated markedly this spring after pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East prompted an anonymous online campaign for a “jasmine revolution” in China.

In the discussions, Mr. Posner said, American officials raised special concerns about a growing crackdown on lawyers who defend human rights advocates and dissidents. They included Teng Biao, a lawyer and professor who has not been heard from since he vanished in February; Chen Guangcheng, a blind self-taught lawyer and civil rights activist who has been under house arrest since September; and Gao Zhisheng, an internationally recognized rights lawyer who vanished last April shortly after having been freed from a previous confinement.

The officials also asked the Chinese for information on Ai Weiwei, the artist and social critic who has not been seen since he was seized this month, and Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, an artist and poet who has been held incommunicado in the couple’s apartment since her husband was named a Nobel laureate. And they asked about Xue Feng, an American geologist sentenced to eight years in prison last July on charges of stealing state secrets after he bought a database on China’s oil industry.

Mr. Posner did not detail the Chinese response to each case, but his description of the government’s answer to queries about Mr. Ai appeared to be the norm. “On that case,” he said, “we certainly did not get an answer that satisfies. There was no sense, no sense of comfort from the response or the language.”

The annual human rights dialogue, a staple of the diplomatic relationship, has long been irritating to the Chinese. This year’s meeting, held shortly after the State Department issued its annual evaluation of human rights in China and other nations, was preceded by broadsides in the Chinese news media recounting flaws in the United States’ human rights record. At the Foreign Ministry’s briefing on Thursday, a spokesman, Hong Lei, accused Washington of using human rights “as a pretext for meddling in China’s internal affairs.”

Mr. Posner rejected that on Thursday, and he said that while the United States’ record was imperfect, the government allowed critics of all stripes to attack its flaws and crusade for change without fear of retaliation. “Those people are not at risk,” he said. “We allow these things, and frankly, they make us stronger.”