Rosner's Domain: "His best interest is to get to negotiations as soon as possible"

Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley - traveling with Secretary Clinton - had briefed the traveling press en route to Cairo. Here's part of the transcript:

QUESTION: this may seem obvious, but can we - do you - the totality of what the Secretary is saying recently about how positive it is for Israel to offer a halt to settlements and no more expropriations, can we deduce from that that part of what's going on here is she's asking the Palestinians to drop the precondition and to consider what Israel has done as important and something that they can sell as a freeze to their public and get on with the peace talks?  Is that what she's doing?

MR. CROWLEY:  Well, let me start from a different place and come back to that.  As we've said throughout the trip, there's clearly a gap between the two parties.  We've been encouraging for several weeks now for negotiations to begin as soon as possible. That remains our hope. So on the standpoint, we're simply trying to chip away at this gap. And as she has said yesterday and today, any steps that we feel narrow this gap and move the parties forward to a negotiation we see as a positive development. 

So certainly, she - in her meeting with President Abbas the other day, she suggested very directly that, in our view, his best interest is to get to negotiations as soon as possible. And obviously, in her meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, while their offer falls short of what we had suggested, obviously that is, in her view - the word again - unprecedented.  And so - but certainly, we'll have the opportunity with President Mubarak to compare notes on - he's a very adroit reader of the parties. He's had his own interaction. President Mubarak has a very good working relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

QUESTION: Just as a follow, so is it too strong for us to report that she's become an advocate for them dropping the precondition?

MR. CROWLEY: Let me get there a different way. We do not think that there should be preconditions to negotiations, and we do not think - and we believe that it - that both parties will be best served by getting into negotiations as quickly as possible. But we do understand how the settlement issue is important to the Palestinians. It's important to the Israelis. It's important to others in the region. And what we're trying to do, what we were doing in our consultations with various leaders in Morocco is to try to just figure out what is the best way forward. How can we help move the parties towards the start of negotiations? So I wouldn't - I just wouldn't say it as directly as that, but our view is, on the one hand, there should be no preconditions. On the other hand, we want to see negotiations start as quickly as possible, and we're just simply trying to see how we can move the two closer to where they feel comfortable with making that decision.

QUESTION: Two questions. One, the Palestinians say that it's not a precondition that they're putting to restart the talks. They're simply saying Israel has to fulfill its obligations under the Roadmap, and if they can't even do that, why should we sit down to talk to them? But another question is you've said several times that you're looking at creative ideas to kickstart this process. Can you tell us a little bit more? I mean, what is the way around this issue of settlement freeze? It's - neither side is really budging enough to satisfy the other. 

MR. CROWLEY:  I suppose I would just say this will take political courage on both sides. These are very difficult issues. As the Secretary has reflected at various times, they've been close before and for whatever reason, or a combination of circumstances, they've just never been able to get over the finish line. So this is a - I mean, there are specific technical issues involved here. They're well known. But this is also a political challenge, and so it does take what kind of confidence-building measures can we establish that, whether or not they're perfect - and the Secretary has said again today in the interviews - we can't - in this process, you can't afford to make perfect an obstacle to the very good. So if you take absolute positions, then it's unlikely that negotiations are going to start. We feel very strongly that both parties are best served by getting to negotiation, putting all of these issues on the table. And if you get to an agreement, then you've solved - you have, in fact, solved these various issues, including settlements, including borders, including refugees, and obviously including Jerusalem. 

So I'm not sure I can answer it any - in a different way, but to the extent that we can take steps, encourage them to take steps that then give them confidence, provide some momentum to this effort that gets them to a point where they might say it's not everything we were looking for, but it's enough, there’s enough of an investment or they're beginning to have enough confidence that the dynamic will begin to - they'll see the dynamic as constructive. So we'll be looking at a variety of ways that increase the interaction between the parties in some form, find ways that they can begin to address the issues. If we can do that, then we think that at some point baby steps then create a momentum of their own and the effort can pick up steam. So we recognized coming into the region that things have stalled, and we're just looking - keep looking to see how we can begin to create some forward momentum again.