if you don't agree with Rice, her way or no way ...

Top Russian diplomat rebukes U.S.
ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer Feb 2

WASHINGTON - Russia's top diplomat rebuked the Bush administration Friday for its resistance to diplomacy with distasteful Middle East governments and said Syria should be part of international efforts to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace.

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice looking on, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested the United States is being shortsighted if it will not engage anyone who could help fix problems from Iraq to Lebanon to long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace.

"We believe that it is counterproductive to isolate anybody," Lavrov said following a gathering of world powers that hope to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Lavrov did not address his remarks to the United States, but Russia has increasingly opposed or resisted U.S. efforts to isolate Iran and Syria as well as the Iranian-backed Hamas militants now in control of most of the Palestinian government.

"We are in favor of involving all those who can contribute to progress in this process," Lavrov said. "And definitely, in this case, Syria could play a constructive role."

Lavrov said Syria has responded positively to a Russian request to mediate between Hamas and the Western-backed Fatah faction, and he defended Russian contacts with Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist group.

The Russian diplomat spoke in Russian, and his words were translated.

"I don't think that to resolve this problem, just like any problem that exists in the world, that you could do it through boycott and isolation," Lavrov said of the U.S.-backed strategy of diplomatic and financial isolation of Hamas.

His implicit criticism followed more frontal critiques this week from former secretaries of state James A. Baker III, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. All said the Bush administration should talk to Iran and Syria in hopes of reducing violence in Iraq.

Baker, a Republican who served under President Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, also said that renewed U.S. dialogue with Syria could remove a major roadblock to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Baker said, "We could get them (Syria) to get Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. It would be a huge step in the right direction."

The Bush administration has refused high-level contact with Syria, citing Syrian support for groups like Hamas. The administration also suggests Damascus would try to bargain for renewed influence in Lebanon and a pass for its possible involvement in the assassination of a Lebanese politician who had tried to peel his country away from Syrian domination.

"Syria doesn't need the United States to tell it what it can do to be a stabilizing force," Rice said Friday.

The four-way Mideast peace meeting, convened by Rice, risked appearing irrelevant in light of deadly fighting between rival Palestinian political factions. Any eventual political accommodation with Israel would require a Palestinian government unified and capable enough to negotiate lasting terms.

"There is simply no reason to avoid the subject of how we get to a Palestinian state," Rice said. "I think, in fact, the political horizon of a Palestinian state can help to show the Palestinian people what is possible."

Friday was the single deadliest day in the power struggle between Hamas militants and the Western-backed secular Fatah faction. A year of political impasse and mounting violence have complicated peace efforts and raised alarm of a Palestinian civil war. With the death toll climbing to 17 — including four children — the two sides declared their second truce in a week. The first had quickly collapsed.

The United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union together decried the violence Friday.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in internal violence since Hamas trounced the former ruling Fatah party in parliamentary elections last year and formed a Cabinet. The political factions each control part of the Palestinian leadership, and each command militias or security forces like those that battled in the streets of the Gaza Strip on Friday.

The international leaders reiterated the conditions they set for the Hamas-led Palestinian government to receive vital overseas financial aid and international political recognition: Accept Israel, renounce violence and embrace prior agreements between Israel and the Palestinians to work toward peace.

Hamas has refused to meet the terms, leading to a cutoff of direct international aid and a breakdown of services and order in the Palestinian territories. The two factions have been unable to form a unified governing coalition.

World powers have largely abandoned hope that Hamas will drop the anti-Israel positions and are looking for a new approach. Friday's meeting focused partly on European and U.S. efforts to steer money to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah or to charitable groups that help the Palestinian poor without benefiting Hamas.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive international negotiations, said that preliminary reviews show more than $700 million in such aid last year. The official estimated Hamas took in only about $110 million in legitimate and clandestine revenue.

The official referred to the approximately $10 million that Russia sent to the Palestinians last year. The United States is proposing nearly $86 million to train and equip Fatah security forces this year, on top of millions in medical and other assistance.

The Palestinian Authority is effectively broke, with a monthly deficit in the tens of millions of dollars. Palestinians are the biggest per capita recipients of foreign aid in the world, with overseas donors typically contributing about half the annual $1.9 billion budget.