New diplomatic activity from the Russians has become the latest wild card thrown into the already volatile world of the Middle East peace process.
Russia, long an almost-invisible co-sponsor of the peace process, jumped into the fray in recent weeks, taking the United States and some in the pro-Israel community by surprise.
In the midst of U.S. efforts to get the peace process back on track in the wake of the Feb. 25 murders at the Hebron mosque, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev recently turned up in the Middle East to discuss the peace process with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
And Russia recently called for a so-called “Madrid II” international conference on the Middle East.
The U.S. government responded to these activities with a reaction that was tepid at best.
The Russians “are a co-sponsor of the Middle East peace talks, and therefore, have a right to have their say,” President Clinton said Wednesday at a joint news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
“I think it is very important, however,” Clinton continued, “that as a co-sponsor, insofar as possible, that we coordinate our actions together and that anything they do is not seen as an obstacle to peace, but facilitates it.”
The president took a wait-and-see attitude toward future Russian involvement in the Middle East, saying that whether the Russians were a “positive force” would be “revealed by their own conduct in the days and weeks ahead.”
At a press briefing during this week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, AIPAC President Steve Grossman offered few specifics in response to a question about the new Russian involvement.
Grossman said that the Russian involvement was “a fairly recent development” and that AIPAC officials had not discussed it in their contacts with the Clinton administration.
Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, told the AIPAC conference that “we very much hope that the Russians will fully coordinate their moves with Washington.”
Middle East analysts differed on what they saw as the reasons behind — and the importance of — this new Russian initiative.
The Russian moves in the Middle East coincided with increased Russian diplomatic activity on other fronts, including Bosnia.
In his remarks Wednesday, Clinton spoke positively of Russian cooperation in working toward a resolution of the continuing conflict in Bosnia.
During the Cold War, the Middle East was an important East-West battlefield, with the Soviet Union backing and funding various Arab countries, including Syria.
RUSSIAN INFLUENCE HAD WANED
But since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russians have not played a major role in the region and have left most of the diplomatic work to the United States, the other co-sponsor of the Middle East peace process.
“When the Middle East moved toward peace, their influence waned,” Richard Haass, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said of the Russians.
Russian influence “was all on one side,” especially with “radical” elements, added Haass, who served as a Middle East specialist in the Bush administration.
Most analysts, like Daniel Pipes, a Philadelphia-based Middle East expert, said the Russian initiative was not serious as far as the Middle East was concerned.
“It’s hard to take it very seriously,” Pipes said.
He added that the Russians have “no influence over important states” in the region and that their “military clout is diminished.”
Pipes said even Russia’s formerly close ties to Syria are now history.
“Syria was part of a network” including military and intelligence ties to Russia, Pipes said. “It’s not there now.”
Both Pipes and Adam Garfinkle, director of the Middle East Council at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said they doubted Russia would continue to devote this relatively high level of attention to the Middle East.
Russia’s actions in the Middle East were a result of “pique” over perceptions that the United States was ignoring Russia and not taking it seriously as a world power, Garfinkle said.
“The Russians feel taken for granted by the United States,” he said.
In addition, Garfinkle said, within the Russian government there are old-style bureaucrats.
These persons would be pushing to regain Russia’s former relationship with Arab countries as a major arms supplier, he said.
This could be another factor in Russia’s activities.
Haass of the Carnegie Endowment said the Russian moves were “largely a function and a reaction to domestic (Russian) pressures and a desire to be seen as an independent great power.”
It is not clear yet whether the Russians want to play a role in the Middle East in order to increase their international prestige or whether they seek “to recreate the bipolarism of the Cold War days,” said Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
He cautioned that the Russians may see an increased role in the Middle East as a golden opportunity to participate in a peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights, if the Israeli-Syrian negotiations make progress.
Satloff said this is “one of the issues we have to be careful about.
“Where does constructive participation end and self-aggrandizement begin?” he asked.
Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat were planning to visit Moscow next month, he said.
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