Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [116]
A few days after my visit to Tehran, I met with President Bush at Camp David. We drove out to the president’s famous weekend retreat high in the mountains of northern Maryland on September 18, 2003. Outside the windows of the wooden lodge, the heavens darkened as Hurricane Isabel thundered inland from the Atlantic Ocean. I asked the president why, despite repeated promises that the money would stop, Chalabi was still being paid $350,000 a month by the U.S. Defense Department.
Bush, dressed casually in a gray jacket and light blue shirt without a tie, was furious. He leaned across the wooden table and said, “You can piss on Chalabi.” Members of my delegation were not exactly sure what the president meant, but they dutifully wrote down his comment in their notes of the meeting. There was an uncomfortable silence from the president’s advisers, as his mood matched the skies outside.
We then began to discuss Israel and Palestine. Although this was the same spot where Barak and Arafat had come so close to an agreement only three years earlier, peace seemed farther away than ever. The road map, a concept that Jordan had put forward the previous year to provide a set of specific steps toward peace, now seemed to be in disarray.
But Bush continued to blame Arafat for the deadlock in the peace process. “The road map is darn specific!” he said, raising his voice. “Palestinians failed the first test. Arafat does not want peace.”
Demonstrating that Sharon’s campaign to link Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians to the wider American “war on terror” had in large part succeeded, the president said he was still in a war frame of mind and that part of this war on terror is in the Palestinian territories. Stressing his view that Arafat was unable or unwilling to make peace, the president made it clear he believed that Arafat was a failed leader and said he would no longer deal with him. He would spend political capital on winners, not losers, he said. Then, angry at Arafat’s inability to control Palestinian violence, he added, “What we asked of him is doable, and he did not do it!”
The U.S. administration seemed to have a very one-sided view of the situation. Bush was sincere, but appeared not to have been receiving the best, or most impartial, advice. I tried to give him a more comprehensive view of the situation. I defended Arafat and told him that Arafat was the leader of the Palestinian people. You may or may not like him, I said, but he is viewed by the Palestinian people as their legitimate representative.
Shifting gears, Bush asked about my recent trip to Iran. I told him that it had been positive, and relayed the Iranian offer to hand over the Al Qaeda prisoners they were holding and to embark on a wider, more comprehensive discussion on their nuclear program and on cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. He told me his staff would follow up. I never heard any more about the matter, but I know that custody of the Al Qaeda members, including a number of senior leaders, was never transferred.
Although we made good progress on several issues, I emerged from Camp David convinced that the peace process would not be moved forward this time around.
A few months later the Iranians would receive some welcome news from Baghdad regarding their old enemy, Saddam Hussein. On December 13, 2003, Saddam was captured by U.S. forces at a farmhouse near Tikrit, around one hundred miles north of Baghdad. The next day satellite news stations showed pictures of a bearded, disheveled Saddam and his underground hiding place. It was a surreal moment. Many Arabs felt let down, almost humiliated, by the way Saddam had capitulated