Mike Pompeo has doubts about Trump’s West Asia peace plan
The much awaited West Asia peace plan is being put together by the President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner and a former lawyer Kason Greenblatt.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who is among the few people with access to President Donald Trump’s under-construction but ambitious West Asia peace plan was reportedly not very optimistic about its prospects in a closed-door meeting with American Jewish leaders last week.
“One might argue” that the plan is “unexecutable” and it might not “gain traction”. Pompeo said, according to a report in The Washington Post based on a leaked audio recording of the meeting
He added: “It may be rejected. Could be in the end, folks will say, ‘It’s not particularly original, it doesn’t particularly work for me,’ that is, ‘It’s got two good things and nine bad things, I’m out’.”
The much awaited plan is being put together by the President’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner and a former lawyer Kason Greenblatt. One part of the plan rolls out later this month at a business summit the US is hosting jointly with Bahrain to attract investors to West Asia - Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt.
Palestinians, who have stopped talking to the US for Trump’s decision to recognize disputed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, have been cold to the business summit, saying they were not consulted. The most intractable parts of the Israel-Palestine conflicts — status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in West Bank — will be tackled by the remaining part of the plan.
Kushner’s most recent remarks on Palestinians may not help his case for his plan. In an interview to Axios, Kushner expressed doubts about the ability of Palestinians to govern themselves, free of Israeli interference in military and governmental affairs. “I think that’s a high bar ... if you don’t have proper government structure and proper security when people are living in fear of terror, that hurts the Palestinians. The hope is, is that over time, they can become capable of governing,” he said.
Pompeo’s sobering assessment of the plan is the first by a senior Trump aide. But the secretary of state tempered his skepticism with hopes that the plan will get a fair hearing. “I hope everyone will engage in a serious way,” he was quoted from the recording.
Asked about Pompeo’s remarks, the President told reporters, “We’re doing our best to help the Middle East to get a peace plan. And he (Pompeo) may be right. I mean, most people would say that.”
“When Mike says that, I understand when he says that because most people think it can’t be done. I think it probably can. But, as I say often, we’ll see what happens.”
Kushner on Trump
In the same interview to Axios, Kushner denied Trump was a racist. “You can’t not be a racist for 69 years and then run for president and be a racist,” he said. And when asked if Trump’s birtherism charges, that President Barack Obama was not born in the US and was thus not qualified to be President, amounted to racism, Kushner repeatedly said he was not involved in that. And when pressed, he said, “Look, I know who the President is and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So again, I was not involved in that.”