The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4 Middle East Policy Gets a One-Two Punch from Retired Diplomats During the last week of April, 52 retired British diplomats kicked up a fuss in London and beyond with an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair. They urged him to influence the “doomed” U.S. policy in the Middle East as “a matter of the highest urgency,” or stop backing it altogether (for the full text of the letter, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_poli tics/3660837.stm ). The letter focus- es first on the Israel-Palestine dispute, and secondarily on Iraq. The very next week, some 60 retired U.S. diplomats issued an open letter to President Bush, applauding their British colleagues and charging that the president’s “unqualified sup- port” of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies and plans has cost the country its credibility, prestige and friends (for the full text, see http:// www.wrmea.com /). In contrast with the British state- ment, the American document focuses almost entirely on Israel. The American Educational Trust, publish- ers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs , hosted a press conference to make the letter public on May 4. Initiated by Andrew Killgore, former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, and Richard Curtiss, former chief inspector of the U.S. Information Agency, the letter calls for support for negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, “with the U.S. serving as a truly honest broker.” The British diplomats, including former ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel Aviv, said they had “watched with deepening concern” as Britain fol- lowed the U.S. lead in Israel and Iraq, and called for a debate in Parliament. “A number of us felt that our opinions on these two subjects were pretty widely shared and we thought that we ought to make them public,” said the document’s coordinator, former Bri- tish ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles. Lord Howe, foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, told the Radio 4 Today Programme that the diplomats’ comments reflect “great anxiety” in the Foreign Office. But not all British diplomats agreed. Lord Robbin Renwick, Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. from1991 to 1995, ridiculed the letter-writers in an op-ed for The Telegraph for acting like members of a trade union and dismissed the signato- ries as former Arabists, “affectionately known as the Camel Corps” ( www. telegraph.co.uk/ ). But, according to Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East program at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, “The charge that they are just old buffers and Arabists from the ‘camel corps’ won’t stick.” Hollis says the views of the retired let- ter-writers are most likely mirrored by serving diplomats. “Critics of foreign policy inside the Foreign Office have gone very quiet. There was an attempt a few years ago by a group still working there to complain about policy towards Iraq and Israel, but they were told they could forget their careers if they went public. The Arabists have seen what has happened in the [U.S.] State Department,” Hollis said ( www. newsvote.bbc.co.uk/ ). INR’s Track Record Highlighted “Spy World Success Story” is the title of David Ignatius’ May 2 column in the Washington Post spotlighting State’s tiny Bureau of Intelligence and Research ( http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns /ignatiusdavid /). “O ne of Washing- C YBERNOTES N o more clicking your way through the AFSA Web site to find the Foreign Service Journal . Now, while you’re waiting for snail mail or the pouch to bring your FSJ , you can check out the lat- est issue with just one tap of the mouse. As part of an effort to broad- en the Journal ’s audience and raise its profile, the magazine now has its own URL: www.fsjournal.org . Posted are the current issue and all back issues from January 2000 to date. For each issue you can view the table of contents; titles, authors and descriptions of all the focus arti- cles and features; and links to the full text of four or five of the main arti- cles. The Journal has been on the Web for a number of years, but was only accessible through the AFSA Web site. The Journal Web site also gives general contact information as well as information to prospective readers on how to subscribe, and to contrib- utors on how to submit a letter, col- umn or article. Site of the Month: www.fsjournal.org