Pat Dollard

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The Sunday Times

Sarah Baxter in Washington and Uzi Mahnaimi

BARACK OBAMA’S special envoy to the Middle East is to visit Syria this week after the president said “the moment is now” to push for peace.

Former senator George Mitchell’s expected visit follows a fortnight’s intensive diplomatic wooing of Syria in the hope of splintering its alliance with Iran and persuading Damascus to use its influence to moderate Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules the Gaza Strip.

There has been no official confirmation of Mitchell’s trip, but one State Department official said he was “95% sure” that Syria was on the itinerary: “The president is committed to comprehensive peace. Syria is one of the parties. It therefore makes sense for Mitchell to start engaging them.”

The initiative follows Obama’s ground-breaking speech last week in Cairo, which impressed his audience but left the Arab world wondering whether he would act on his words. Yesterday the president said he hoped to see “serious, constructive negotiations” by the end of the year on creating a Palestinian state.

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, helped to smooth Mitchell’s path in a personal telephone call to Walid al-Moualem, the Syrian foreign minister, last week and promised to develop a “road map” for thawing Washington’s relations with Damascus.

Obama demanded that Israel halt the construction of settlements on Palestinian land, but he avoided repeating Clinton’s stronger language that this be without exception – “not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions”, she said – which has left him little room for diplomacy.

“What if they don’t take more land but build up and put another storey on a building? The administration has put itself in a difficult position,” said David Schenker, a former Pentagon official now based at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The demand for an outright settlement freeze has put Obama on a collision course with Binyamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli prime minister. “There will be no agreement on this unless the Americans soften their stance,” a source close to Netanyahu said.

Ian Kelly, Clinton’s own spokesman, retreated from her blunt comment at a briefing. “We’re not focusing on adding rooms for new babies or any kind of natural growth of the settlements. We’re focusing on creating the conditions where we can get a lasting solution to this problem,” he said.

Kelly’s comment represented a climbdown for Clinton, whose influence and status have been lessened by the appointment of seasoned, high-profile envoys such as Mitchell to the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, has been acting as an intermediary between Syria and the White House. He and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, dined in Damascus with their wives in February and have reportedly kept in touch by telephone. With so many political heavyweights involved, Clinton’s role has become squeezed.

The success of Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Arab world will ultimately depend on the willingness of Netanyahu to compromise. If he does not, the president’s Cairo speech will become “just another set of talking points that have no legs”, according to Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator based at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Some Arab leaders are said to have been equally intransigent so far, including King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whom Obama met in Riyadh last week. “He wanted them to go a step further [towards Israel] and didn’t get anything out of them either,” said Schenker.

Obama said last week the Israeli leader had only just been elected and should be given time to make peace. Nevertheless, a showdown is looming.

According to Yossi Verter, an Israeli political analyst, Netanyahu “will have to decide over the coming weeks whom he would rather pick a fight with: the American administration, whose president sees himself in an almost messianic role, or his own coalition members and members of his party”.

Sources close to Netanyahu believe the president’s hidden objective is to bring down Israel’s newly formed right-wing coalition government.

Netanyahu believes a settlement freeze and talks about a Palestinian state would split his government. “Obama is naive,” said an Israeli government source. “His project will crash on the harsh reality of the Middle East.”

Israeli political analysts say that relations with the United States are at their lowest point since James Baker, then secretary of state, forced a reluctant Israel to attend peace negotiations with the Palestinians in Madrid in 1991.

In a muted statement after Obama’s Cairo speech, Netanyahu emphasised that Israel would continue “protecting its interests, especially its national security”.

If the Israeli government were to fall, Netanyahu might be able to drop Avigdor Lieberman, his ultra-conservative foreign minister, and return to power in coalition with Tzipi Livni, the relatively moderate leader of the Kadima party – an outcome that Obama would surely welcome.

Senior US officials recently warned Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, that Israel was in danger of losing American support if it continued to block negotiations on a settlement freeze. Barak pleaded with officials to stop briefing the press as it was limiting his room for manoeuvre.

One indication of public opinion in the Middle East will be the results of elections in Lebanon, which votes today. If the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group gains ground, it will be perceived as a victory for militants over the United States.

“Lebanon is important in terms of regional perceptions. Will it be a victory for the United States and a defeat for Iran, or will it be even more difficult to make headway with Iran?” said Schenker.

In his view, the Israeli government is likely to keep its hold on power: “It is a coalition that has really been put together to stop Iran.” If Netanyahu and his diminishing cabinet survive pressure from Obama to stop building on settlements, it will be because Iran is “a bigger issue at play”.

- United Nations inspectors investigating Syria’s clandestine nuclear programme have discovered traces of uranium at a laboratory in Damascus that match samples taken from the site of a suspected reactor bombed by Israel in September 2007. Experts say they indicate attempts to isolate plutonium from spent reactor fuel.

Iran revolt

A grassroots backlash against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hardline president, over an ailing economy and the harsh treatment of young people by religious police has given a late boost to his leading rival in this week’s presidential election, writes Kayvon Biouki.

In Tehran a sea of green – worn as ribbons, headscarves, T-shirts and wristbands – has become the symbol of support for Mir-Hossein Moussavi, prime minister from 1981 to 1989. The colour was adopted in an echo of Ukraine’s orange revolution, which saw the old guard swept away under the force of people power.

The freedom the campaign affords has allowed young people to escape the drab conformity imposed by the religious police.

If Ahmadinejad fails to get an overall majority in Friday’s vote there will be a run-off. It could be a close race.