POLAND MEETING TARGETS IRAN’ S M ALIGN INFLUENCE
Israel-Palestine issue, anti-Daesh fight, Syria and Yemen will also to be discussed. |
Foreign ministers and senior officials from 60 nations gathered in the Polish capital Warsaw yesterday where the United States hoped to ratchet up pressure against Iran despite concerns among major European countries about heightened tensions with Tehran.
Initially it was billed by President Donald Trump’s administration as an Iran-focused meeting, but the organisers significantly broadened its scope to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fight against Daesh, Syria and Yemen.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicted that the conference will “deliver really good outcomes” and played down the impact of lower-level participation. He told reporters in Slovakia on Tuesday that this “is going to be a serious concrete discussion about a broad range of topics that range from counterterrorism to the malign influence that Iran has played in the Middle East towards its instability”.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Vice-President Mike Pence are attending, along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterparts from numerous Arab nations, France and Germany are not sending Cabinet-level officials, and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is staying away. Russia and China aren’t participating, and the Palestinians, who have called for the meeting to be boycotted, also will be absent.
Pence will address the conference on a range of Mideast regional issues, Pompeo will talk about US plans in Syria following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops and Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner will speak about his as-yet unveiled Middle East peace plan.
“We think we will make real progress,” Pompeo said. “We think there’ll be dozens of nations there seriously working towards a better, more stable Middle East, and I’m hoping by the time we leave on Thursday we’ll have achieved that.”
He did not, however, offer any details about specific outcomes. Trump’s lawyer and former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani called on the conference to take a “firm stance” on Iran to press its government to adopt a democratic course.
‘Isolating Iran’
Giuliani spoke yesterday in Warsaw to a few hundred participants at a protest by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an Iranian exile group. He spoke just hours before the international conference on the Middle East opened in Warsaw. He said he hoped the conference, just like the US government, will be firm on Iran “so that we don’t do business with them, so that we isolate them, so that we do the best that we can to get them to change their policies, and if they don’t change their policies, to change the regime”. He stressed to reporters he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Meanwhile, in a joint opinion piece published yesterday by CNN, Pompeo and Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said they didn’t expect all participants to agree on policies or outcomes, but called for an airing of unscripted and candid ideas.
“We expect each nation to express opinions that reflect its own interests,” they wrote. “Disagreements in one area should not prohibit unity in others.” Since Pompeo first announced the conference as a vehicle to combat increasing Iranian assertiveness during a Mideast tour last month, he has steadily sought to widen the programme’s focus with limited success.
Nuclear ambitions
Despite his efforts, Iran is still expected to be a major, if not the primary, topic of discussion, notably its nuclear ambitions, ballistic missile programme, threats to Israel and support for Al Houthi militia in Yemen and Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime.
Kushner’s partner in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, Trump’s special envoy for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt, made clear that the US sees Iran as its top priority. In a series of tweets yesterday, he derided the Palestinians for insisting that their case is the region’s most important.
However, the absence of foreign ministers from major European
We think there’ll be dozens of nations there seriously working towards a better, more stable Middle East, and I’m hoping by the time we leave on Thursday we’ll have achieved that.” Mike Pompeo | US Secretary of State
powers, Germany and France, highlights festering tensions with the EU over Trump’s decision last year to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions. “Some countries are having their foreign ministers come. Other countries are not. That’s their choice,” Pompeo told a news conference.
While countries such as France, Germany and Britain have opened a new channel for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert US sanctions and keep the nuclear deal afloat, they have criticised Tehran’s ballistic missile programme.
Netanyahu meets Alawi
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Omani Foreign Minister Yousuf Bin Alawi on the sidelines of the conference and hinted that other Arab countries were also engaging with Israel.