Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa praised a high-level US panel that called for a diplomatic push for Middle East peace, saying the time was ripe for concerted international action. Mussa called the Iraq Study Group's report "very interesting, full of very sound recommendations" after holding talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Mussa spoke a day after the Iraq Study Group, led by ex-secretary of state Jim Baker and former lawmaker Lee Hamilton, released a report on US policy in Iraq that included calls for a renewed push to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I got the definite impression from the long discussion with secretary Rice this afternoon that the Middle East deserves an action-oriented policy when it comes to the peace process," he said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
"And for Iraq, the report of the Baker-Hamilton group will get serious consideration by the administration," he said, adding: "We talked about almost each and every recommendation of the report."
The Iraq Study Group, warning the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating," called for most US combat troops to be withdrawn by early 2008, for Washington to engage in dialogue with Iran and Syria and for a fresh US bid to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mussa said there were promising developments in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza and a degree of flexibility displayed by both sides in public statements, which needed to be seized upon with urgent diplomacy.
"We should not let such signs fade away. We have to base our efforts now on such signs in order to rebuild the peace process that has been dormant, if not dead, for the last several years," said the former Egyptian foreign minister.
He said a new peace process should have a clear time frame and avoid a return to previous diplomacy that dragged on for more than a decade without a final settlement.
"It cannot be left for another 15 years," he said. "We want to move and to move quickly."
Washington had an important role to play in fostering peace in the Middle East, the senior diplomat said.
"We need the US to return to the posture, to the role of the honest broker," he said.
As for Iraq, Mussa said the worsening violence was a crisis not just for Washington but for the Arab world.
"We are all on the same side trying ... to deal with the situation in Iraq in a way that would prevent anarchy," Mussa said.
The diplomat said he wanted the Arab League to convene a national conference on reconciliation in Baghdad to defuse sectarian bloodletting.
Such a conference would be "the point of departure if we want Iraq to stand on its feet again," he said.
International diplomacy will succeed in Iraq "if we underline and mobilize all our energies to support a process of reconciliation that Iraq will be the country for all its citizens -- (with) no partition -- to emphasize the oneness of Iraq, the territorial integrity of Iraq," Mussa said.
