ARAB-US RELATIONS - Apr 14 - The Bush-Sharon Friendship.

(Sharon was Bush's guide to Israel in 1998 when the latter was Texas governor. "I had the honour of travelling the West Bank with Ariel Sharon by helicopter", Bush told an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition in 1999. "You can imagine what it was like to be given a history lesson by this great warrior and hero of freedom and democracy". Sharon also had praise Bush during the Apr 14 press conference, saying: "I myself have been fighting terror for many years, and understand the threats and cost from terrorism. In all these years, I have never met a leader as committed as you are, Mr President, to the struggle for freedom and the need to confront terrorism wherever it exists". These words may resonate favourably for Bush among Jewish and conservative Christian voters in an election year. Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, was on Apr 17 quoted by the FT as saying: "The president is in a tight spot and Jewish votes matter, particularly in some key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio".

(It was Abrams who reasoned that Bush should not be bound by "myths and taboos". It was not helpful for Arab and Palestinian leaders to continue to perpetuate the "myth" that Palestinian refugees would one day return to their homes in Israel. It was important to create the precedent of withdrawal from the settlements, rather than making settlements untouchable. And it was important to get things moving when there had been no progress since last August. Abrams, a Reagan official implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, in 1991 admitted withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years' probation and community service. In the years after he was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, Abrams wrote a book calling for Jews to return to their faith to stem assimilation. He also helped found the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-con think-tank which included Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Abrams supported Sharon, a leader, he once wrote, who knows "the road to peace lies through strength instead of weakness".

(In neo-con circles, Abrams is seen as one of the most effective operators in modern American government. Jon Alterman, who was on the State Department's policy and planning staff and now is with a US think-tank, says: "Elliott Abrams is one of the best bureaucratic artists in Washington. He has traditionally taken bureaucratic positions and turned them into strong positions, because he reads the president and knows what he wants. Elliott Abrams is the person who got the Middle East to talk about reform. [The US] cannot micromanage the universe, but you can force items on to the agenda. He has done a masterful job of that".