26 January 2009
President Sends Special Envoy Mitchell to Middle East
Mitchell will be tasked with consolidating cease-fire
Washington — One of the key missions of Middle East special envoy George Mitchell's trip to the region will be to consolidate the cease-fire after the three-week-old Gaza conflict, a State Department spokesman says, and to ensure progress toward Middle East peace.
Mitchell, whose appointment was announced January 22 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will travel to Israel, Egypt, the West Bank, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, with possible other stops beginning January 26, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said at a daily briefing.
“The administration will actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Israel and its neighbors,” he said. Israel and Hamas, which gained control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, each unilaterally declared a cease-fire to end the most recent hostilities.
Mitchell will work to consolidate gains after the Gaza cease-fire, establish an effective anti-smuggling and interdiction regime to prevent Hamas from rearming, help reopen border crossings and develop an effective response to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians in Gaza and Gaza reconstruction, Wood said.
Mitchell will be traveling in the region with David Hale, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and representatives from the National Security Council and the Defense Department, Wood said. In Jerusalem and Ramallah, Mitchell will be joined by Samuel Witten, the acting assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, and George Laudato, special assistant to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The trip is from January 26 to February 3.
Wood said he did not expect that Mitchell and his team would meet with Syrian officials, and the group will not have any contact with Hamas representatives. The United States has identified Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization. The trip itinerary is still subject to changes and additions, he said.
In recent days, the president made telephone calls to the leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to the president of the Palestinian Authority, to confirm his commitment to active engagement in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Obama and Clinton wasted no time in naming Mitchell, a veteran former U.S. senator and experienced negotiator, as special envoy for Middle East peace. Mitchell helped win a peace accord in Northern Ireland, and he led a commission that searched for ways to end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The latter commission published a report in 2001 that was dubbed “the Mitchell Report.”
The United States is actively promoting a two-state solution in the Middle East with Israel and a new Palestinian state living at peace side by side.
Wood said Mitchell and his group would be “in a listening mode. He wants to talk to regional leaders and try to get the peace process back on track. And he'll obviously be discussing the humanitarian situation.”
In addition, the United States has been working with other nations in the region and elsewhere to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's institutions and ministries so that it will be able to manage an independent state, Wood said.
Israel launched an offensive on Gaza, which lies between southern Israel and Egypt along the Mediterranean Sea, on December 27, 2008, after Hamas began a series of rocket attacks on Israel. Gaza has been under control of Hamas since June 2007, when its forces ousted the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which has maintained control over the West Bank territories and is the recognized government of the Palestinian Territories.
