It's the biggest public event on this season's diplomatic calendar, but the topic is so sensitive that even the invitations are classified.
Not that they need to be. The invites to next week's Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., offer few details about the substance of the proceedings aimed at launching the first Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years.
In fact, they aren't even real invitations. Rather, they're an 11-page set of confidential instructions sent Tuesday to U.S. diplomats to present when requesting the presence of those deemed important enough to participate — more than 40 invitees.
The instructions strive to avoid contention, omitting references to specific timelines and peace proposals outside the immediate scope of the talks while leaving open the possibility that these issues may be raised, according to officials who have seen the classified diplomatic cable. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the cable is classified.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch has briefly described the talking points given to U.S. ambassadors to explain the administration's reasoning behind the conference and what it's supposed to achieve.
They "call upon the international community to support the efforts of the parties and reiterate the president's call in his speech in July to look for other ways to do that by helping progress on institution-building, capacity-building among the Palestinians, support reform and bring diplomatic support to the negotiations," Welch said.
Beyond a very general outline of the main topics to be addressed at Annapolis and in pre- and post-conference meetings in Washington, the cable is largely silent, and more than half of it is devoted to purely organizational matters, according to officials who received it.
Only four pages are devoted to the actual meetings that begin on Monday in Washington when President Bush sees Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House and then speaks to all conference participants at a dinner hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the officials said.
The remaining pages cover such mundane technicalities tailored to each invitee such as how large their delegations may be, how many chairs they will have in the conference room, the process of gaining credentials and motorcade arrangements, they said.
Still, the officials stressed that Middle East peacemaking demands discretion, even on minor points, and that the language of the cable was carefully designed to lure acceptances at the highest possible level by avoiding sensitive words or concepts that might taint the conference in the eyes of some.
Thus, there is no specific reference to a timeline for a peace agreement, something the Palestinians want.
And, while the cable does talk of an eventual resolution to the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, a priority for key invitees like Saudi Arabia and Syria, there is no mention of any specific plan to get there, they said.
The ambassadors' instructions, the officials said, contain only general descriptions of the three topics to be discussed at Annapolis: "Demonstrating International Support for the Bilateral Process,""Looking at (Palestinian) Economic Development, Institutional Reform and Capacity Building" and "Toward a Comprehensive Peace."
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