Baker Panel Aide Expects Israel Will Be Pressed

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Baker Panel Aide Expects Israel Will Be Pressed
By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 29, 2006

WASHINGTON — An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference on Iraq.

The assessment was shared in a confidential memorandum — obtained yesterday by The New York Sun — to expert advisers to the commission from a former CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia, Raymond Close. Mr. Close is a member of the expert group advising the commission and was a strong advocate throughout the panel's deliberations for renewed American diplomacy with Iran and Syria.

"To have any realistic chance of success, I believe that the process would have to start with the announcement of a major initiative, promoted and vigorously supported by the United States, to reach a comprehensive resolution to the Israel-Arab crisis through a process of reasonable compromise and accommodation between Israel and its Arab neighbors," he writes.

Mr. Close believes a regional conference centering on Israel's conflict is so likely that "If the ISG suggests a regional conference to which would not be invited, that could only be because Israel and its supporters in the United States intervened to protect Israel from involvement in a process in which it would inevitably have to make significant concessions and compromises."

Mr. Close does not specify what those compromises would be. He does however write that America and Israel will need to make "significant modifications" to their current positions.

He describes Iraq as a "looming catastrophe," ending his thoughts with this terse summary: "No simple or convenient solutions. Very little hope of success. But no better ideas to work with."

Mr. Close has been an outspoken critic of the war for which he was tasked to advise a strategy. On June 10, 2003 he penned an article for the newsletter "Counterpunch" in which he concluded that the Bush administration's alleged manipulation of pre-war intelligence "was a crime against those values for which America stands most proud."

Mr. Close has also been an ally of Saudi Arabia. In 1977, on the day of his retirement from the CIA, while still in Jedda, Mr. Close began working with Saudi Arabia's then intelligence chief, Kamal Adham, according to one of his former bosses at the agency's directorate of operations.

EXTRACTS FROM THE CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT BY RAY CLOSE OBTAINED BY THE SUN.

Fasten your seat belts, as Bette Davis would say, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

. . . Baker and Hamilton will soon announce a set of recommendations of which the following is, in my opinion at least, the most important and potentially the most controversial:

Encourage the holding of a regional conference to enlist the support of neighboring states in establishing stability in Iraq. . . All principal states of the region would be invited, particularly including Iran and Syria — and Israel. . . . This initiative could succeed only if the United States and Israel were to convey to prospective attendees in advance their readiness in principle to make significant concessions and accommodations in return for comparable concessions and accommodations from Iran and Syria, by themselves and on behalf of their allies in Lebanon and Palestine. …

There is . . . no simple or easy way to escape the looming catastrophe that was set in motion by the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. . . .

The proposal to call a regional conference sounds good, but does not stand up very well to hard analysis. With George W. Bush in the White House, I cannot see a single prospective participant in a regional conference of this kind (particularly the United States and Israel) coming to the table prepared to make the compromises and concessions that will be essential to reaching a constructive outcome of US policy in Iraq.

…

However …I believe that the ISG will nevertheless recommend the convocation of a regional conference. …Tragically, I think George W. Bush will not agree even to give it a sporting chance.

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