UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Condoleezza Rice made her final visit to the United Nations as secretary of state Monday, launching a two-day effort to firm up her boss' imprint on the Mideast peace process and to press for tougher measures in two African hot spots.
The trip comes little more than a month before the books close on President George W. Bush's foreign policy record. Before heading to New York, Rice told The Associated Press the Mideast peace initiative Bush launched a year ago is the best chance yet to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and shouldn't be dropped just because a year-end deadline for a deal is being missed. She said the negotiations have produced solid results and that the U.S. expects strong support from the U.N. Security Council this week for a resolution that "enshrines" the initiative in the international system.
"The Security Council will make clear that that is the basis going (forward)," Rice said.
The council is expected to vote Tuesday on a resolution sponsored by the U.S. and Russia urging the Israelis and Palestinians "to fulfill their obligations" under the peace process begun in Annapolis, Md., and for all nations and international groups "to contribute to an atmosphere conducive to negotiations."
Rice said she believes "a lot of the fundamentals are in place" for the incoming Obama administration to achieve peace. She noted that Israelis and Palestinians have said they think they have accomplished more since Annapolis than they did during the last sustained negotiations in 2000, in the final year of the Clinton administration.
Many Clinton-era Mideast advisers are part of Obama's foreign policy transition team and there has been concern they may want to try their own approach to Mideast peacemaking.
Later Monday, Rice met with U.N. Security Council members about the Middle East and discussed the situation in the troubled African nations of Zimbabwe and Somalia.
Rice and British Foreign Minister David Miliband met privately with the 15-nation council to hear U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discuss the political crisis and cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. South Africa has been blocking a U.S.-sought statement censuring President Robert Mugabe over the burgeoning health crisis.
"Of course this is spilling over into neighboring states," Miliband said. "The disease that has had the headlines is cholera, but the disease that is at the heart ... is the disease of misrule and corruption."
The World Health Organization reported Monday that the death toll from a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has risen to 978, an increase of nearly 25 percent in three days. The total number of suspected cases reported since the outbreak in August is 18,413, an increase of 1,713 since just Friday.
On Somalia, Rice planned to urge the council to authorize "all necessary measures" against piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa nation.
That would include hunting pirates ashore, even though the commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet expressed doubt Friday about the wisdom of military action on land. Some of the 15-nation council's members also have expressed reservations.
AFP
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