“I think we'll make some progress, I know we'll make some progress," said Bush

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, June 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush travelled from the French spa of Evian to the Middle East Monday, June 2, with a determination to optimistically spur a burst into a long-standing peace process and to deny the Europeans a role in monitoring progress along the international road-map to a Palestinian state.

Bush will meet Arab leaders in Egypt before hosting a formal Middle East summit in the Red Sea Jordanian port Aqaba, Jordan Wednesday, May 4, between Israelis and Palestinians, with European diplomats having been excluded.

"There will be no Europeans involved in the monitoring process. This has been a clear understanding between Israel and the United States," an Israeli official told The Independent.

As Bush has committed his authority to the peace plan, he wants Americans in the driving seat, amid an Israeli insistence it is nobody’s interest to have Europeans “sticking a spoke in the wheels,” the British daily reported.

The U.S. intends to play a hands-on role, pushing the Israelis and Palestinians forward on the issues of security and settlements. Bush is expected to appoint Robert Blackwill, outgoing U.S. ambassador to India, to head a 12-man resident monitoring team.

Blackwill is a former head of the Middle East project at Harvard.

The paper attributed distrust of the EU to first the opposition of most of its states to the invasion of Iraq, and more recently by the steady flow of foreign ministers to Yasser Arafat's bunker in Ramallah, despite American and Israeli urgings to boycott him.

The Europeans had hoped to be involved in monitoring the road-map, which they drafted as part of the "Quartet" of the U.S., Russia and the United Nations and which envisions the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

The Independent said a  British security agent Alistair Crook has been quietly mediating between Palestinians and Israelis for more than a year on behalf of the European Union.

“He is still in occupied Jerusalem but his mission is steadily eroding,” according to the British paper.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas are putting a positive face on the Aqaba summit.

Israel has already started to ease travel restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza, and allow Palestinian laborers to go to jobs in Israel, but the Palestinians dismissed the move as part of “political tricks” as the Jewish state gave a qualified approval to the “roadmap”.

“Sharon will reiterate his commitment to the road-map - with his government's 14 reservations - but his statement will not repeat last week's acknowledgement the West Bank and Gaza Strip are ‘occupied’ territories.”

On settlements, Sharon “will restrict himself at this stage to promising to evacuate only a small part of Jewish outposts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip built on Palestinian territories.”

Optimistic

On his part, U.S. President is optimistic as he launched his first foray in the Middle East peacemaking here.

"I think we'll make some progress, I know we'll make some progress," Bush said at the G8 summit on the shores of Lake Geneva.

His high profile role marks a departure in his presidency, as he has done his best to avoid taking a personal role as Middle East mediator during his first two-and-a-half years in office, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

He will wager a measure of diplomatic credibility on a road strewn with the wreckage of previous presidential peace bids.

He will Tuesday seek support here from Arab leaders including Abbas, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and King Hamad of Bahrain.

Bush will ask leaders to throw their weight behind the roadmap for the revival of political talks and the creation of a Palestinian state as require under the roadmap.

The Palestinians have endorsed the document, while Israel has accepted it with 14 reservations.

Bush's encounters with Abbas will seek to portray the latter as the geniune voice of the Palestinians after Washington declared veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat irrelevant to peace moves.

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, "is going to be on the world stage as the prime minister of the Palestinian people, standing with the prime minister of Israel and with the president of the United States," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell who arrived here ahead of Bush.

"Everybody knows we can't stay where we are. The Palestinian economy has been destroyed. The Israeli economy is in difficulty. Israel doesn't want to keep its troops deployed forever in the cities and towns," Powell told ABC News Monday.

"So I think all the pieces have come together and we are here at Sharm el-Sheikh to take advantage of the new elements in the equation and this window of opportunity that's opened," he added.

The U.S. is facing fresh anti-American sentiments in the Arab region, as many of its peoples wonder over Washington’s precipitous moves to launch invasion of Iraq, while keeping inaction over Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian areas.