Word: berlin
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...proposed Berlin meeting has been slammed by Israeli leaders, including key members of Sharon's cabinet, as rewarding Arafat for violence. And on the Palestinian side, many of Arafat's top advisers have dismissed talking to Peres as a waste of time, pointing out that he has no mandate from Sharon and that with no new initiatives on the table there's no reason to believe this meeting will succeed where countless previous encounters between the two men have failed. And there's open hostility to new talks down on the streets, where recent opinion surveys found that...
...hard to find reasons why the proposed Berlin talks between Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres will fail to bring peace to the Mideast. For one thing, there are no substantially new ideas on the table, and for another each man faces considerable skepticism in his own camp over whether there's any point in talking at all. Listening to the statements of Arafat and Ariel Sharon, it's easy to see why. Fundamentally, Sharon is focused on achieving security guarantees without ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and Arafat is pursuing an end to the occupation...
...Ironically, if the Berlin discussions were to bear fruit, that might actually deepen the crisis. Without a political mechanism for achieving a peaceful end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and creating a viable Palestinian state in those territories, there's no incentive for Arafat or any other Palestinian leader to make peace with Israel. And, of course, no Israeli leader could afford to withdraw from the occupied territories without cast-iron guarantees of Israeli security. Those two premises formed the very foundation of the Oslo peace process, and Oslo's collapse does nothing to change...
...Although nobody's going to get overly optimistic about yet another round of diplomatic efforts to restart previously stalled cease-fire efforts, a new flurry of diplomatic semaphores from Washington, Berlin, the United Nations, Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah suggests a renewed attempt to contain the recent escalation of violence, and to follow the Mitchell Report's recommendations on triage for the stricken peace process. German foreign minister Joschka Fischer on Tuesday persuaded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres to hold a new round of face-to-face talks, under his auspices, at some point...
This week marks the anniversary of both the Cold War's nadir, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and its end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Hugh Sidey writes on one of its lowest points, with President Kennedy at the construction of the Berlin Wall. Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge remembers what the city was like in August 1991, when the hard-liners made their last desperate push to retain power. Tony Karon argues that Russians, at least materially, were better off under the Soviet state. And in an award-winning photo essay, photographer Anthony Suau looks...