Carper's Corner
Carper's Corner
Jordan & Saudi Arabia - November 30, 2005 - 11:30 pm:
We grabbed a little breakfast at our hotel in Amman, Jordan, first thing this morning, headed for the airport, climbed on our military aircraft and took off for Riyadh, the capitol of Saudi Arabia. Two hours later, we were on the ground there shaking hands with the U.S. Ambassador at the bottom of our plane's ladder. A "control officer" from the American embassy, who was assigned to work with our delegation walked us to an awaiting vehicle. The officer introduced himself in part by saying that his wife grew up in Delaware and in nearby Pennsville, New Jersey. His sister-in-law Lynn Davison still lives in Delaware. "Small world," I said. As the American-made vehicle we climbed into roared out of the airport and onto a four-lane highway, we immediately passed a shiny blue Dodge Durango made in Newark, Delaware. I started to feel at home even though our visit to Saudi Arabia was the first by a Congressional delegation in two years.
Saudi Arabia sits on roughly a quarter of the world's known oil reserves. With oil prices still hovering around $55 a barrel, Saudi Arabia is awash in cash. Every direction we looked suggested that the Saudis weren't reluctant to spend it either. Late-model cars from all over the world filled the highways. Breathtaking architectural structures reached from what used to be the desert floor up to the sky. And, where once there was only sand, trees, shrubs, flowers and grass now grow. In a kingdom where the population was overwhelmingly nomadic, barely 75 years ago, today almost 95 percent of the people live in urban centers like Riyadh.
Our afternoon in Riyadh was spent meeting with what could have been called by the late King Fahd "My Three Sons." One is King Abdullah, another is Crown Prince Sultan who also serves as Defense Minister, and the third is Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. All are in their late 70s or early 80s. Two of them, the Crown Prince and the King, looked like they could have been sent right from central casting. On the other hand, their Foreign Minister brother, looked and sounded like he could've graduated from Princeton. And in fact, he did a number of years ago. Together, the three of them and their family have provided and will likely continue to provide leadership for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for years to come. While we met separately with them in opulent palaces, and I doubt that they had rehearsed their comments before hand, they certainly were remarkably on message. Each offered comments that were consistent with the others. On the need for the U.S. and Saudis to set aside their differences since 9/11and begin to cooperate together again, King Abdullah said, "In Iraq, what is done is done. We share many common concerns. We need to begin working together again."
All three declared that an Iraq which disintegrates is intolerable and unimaginable. They acknowledged that their country has an obligation to lead other nations in the region to help stabilize the new government emerging in Iraq while containing the growth of Iranian influence in the region.
King Abdullah told us of an unprecedented, surprise visit two days earlier by the personal emissary of Iran's Supreme Leader. And while the King did not divulge the full content of their conversation he did say to us, that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia share the same enemy with respect to Iraq. And he added, "I think you know who that is." As the meeting concluded and we walked away, I couldn't help but wonder if he was talking about Iran or simply about terrorism in general. Several hours later, I've concluded that he was alluding to Iran, and I am reminded of the old adage - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
We wrapped up our day at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and his wife. Their home is stunning! As they gave us the cook's tour, I suggested to them their residence gives new meaning to the term public housing, and they agreed. We were joined for an outdoor reception and dinner around the pool by several dozen prominent Saudi leaders from business, government, and academia. Over dinner at my table, two women - one a dean of a local university in her 50s and the second a successful young businesswoman half her age - spoke with us about a growing tolerance in their country toward women and the opportunities afforded them. Both women told us that they believed next year's round of municipal elections would witness a first - female candidates. Not only are attitudes towards women evolving here they said, slowly but surely democracy is beginning to take root, as well. And, its introduction will benefit both Saudi females and males.
Israel & Jordan - November 29, 2005 - 11:45 pm:
The second day of our trip, we woke up to a sunny 70 degrees in the original land of milk and honey.
Before the morning would end, our delegation would meet with the Foreign Affairs Advisor to the dynamic new leader of the Israeli Labor Party and be briefed by a senior Israeli intelligence officer before heading for Ramallah in a bullet proof SUV. There, we would meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei before sitting down with the leadership of the Palestinian-American Chamber of Commerce to talk about what all Chambers of Commerce are interested in - jobs.
Qurei was a chief negotiator of the Oslo Accords and worked closely with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s. Despite the title he holds today, Qurei has little power in the current Palestinian government. Meeting with us, he reflected back on those early negotiations and recalled these words of Rabin, "We will fight terror as if there was no peace process; We will pursue peace as if there was no terror." A decade after Rabin's assassination those words still ring true in the Middle East that struggles to reach a lasting peace.
Leaving Prime Minister Qurei, we headed across the street to a meeting with Palestinian business leaders, who had two main requests. First that the U.S. stay involved in peace negotiations, and second, that the U.S. continue to support the creation of jobs for Palestinians, whose unemployment rate exceeds 40 percent.
From Ramallah, it was on to meet the King of Jordan.
Our flight from Tel Aviv to Amman, Jordan, took less than 30 minutes and carried us over some of the driest land on earth. Arid or not, though, Jordan is playing a key role on many fronts these days - in the war against terrorism, in supporting the peace process in Israel, and in building a more stable Iraq. Jordan also turns out to be "training central" for all kinds of activities, too:
* 25,000 Iraqi police recruits trained to date and another 10,000 in the pipeline;
* 600 Iraqi counter-terrorism commandos trained; and,
* 1,200 Iraqi border guards and customs officials trained, as well.
That's not all either. Jordanians even train guard dog handlers, air traffic controllers, and airplane mechanics. And, in a new twist on "training the trainer," Jordanians have also trained 800 Americans to go home and work with American units preparing to deploy to Iraq. Why? To sensitize the U.S. troops to Iraqi customs and culture. There's one thing, though, that Jordan doesn't train. That's Iraqi military officers. They were expected to. The U.S. even invested $50 million to build a training center outside of Amman for just that purpose, but the government of Iraq put the put the kibosh on it. Today the center sits empty and unused.
Jordan is led by King Abdullah, son of the late King Hussein. We met with him for over an hour this afternoon at his residence. Nice digs. This King is one impressive monarch. Educated in England and in the U.S., he speaks with just a touch of a British accent and is knowledgeable on a broad range of subjects. Once the commander of Jordan's Special Forces, King Abdullah isn't afraid to do what he thinks is right either, even if it doesn't always comport with public opinion in his country. He's married to a beautiful woman, Queen Rania, who recently gave birth to their fourth child.
King Abdullah's got a sense of humor, too. I kidded him as we were leaving and asked him if his children had ever seen the Disney film "The Lion King." He laughed and said that they had. I reminded him of one of the songs from the film, "It's Great To Be King," and asked him if it really is all that great to be king. "Being king in this part of the world is a lot of work," he said. "If the country you were king of was wedged between Norway and Sweden, I bet it would be a lot easier." He smiled when he said it, but he wasn't kidding. Jordan is bordered by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. As we drove away from the palace, I thought about how fortunate our country is that he's holding down the job in Jordan. Let's hope he holds on to it for a long time.
Jerusalem - November 28, 2005 - Midnight:
After several weeks of preparation, the hour of our congressional delegation's departure for the Middle East had come. It was 6pm on Sunday evening. Minutes later, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), U.S. Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and I were airborne, heading for Munich, Germany aboard a United airliner on the first leg of our fact-finding mission. Eight hours - and two briefing books later - we touched down in Munich. There, we quickly transferred over to a U.S. military aircraft assigned to us and took off for the last four hours of our journey today. When we landed the second time, we were in Israel, the first stop of a mission that would also take us to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq before heading home next weekend.
Two hours after landing at Tel Aviv, we were being briefed in Jerusalem by U.S. embassy senior staff and by the U.S. Consul General Jake Walles who, incidentally, grew up two blocks from my family's home in Wilmington, Delaware. As soon as the briefing was over, we jumped into a Suburban with our security detail and headed across town to the Prime Minister's office for an hour-long meeting with Ariel Sharon. I had been at the nearby Knesset just eight months earlier when Sharon took on his own Likud party to push for, and win, approval of a controversial plan to pull Israeli settlers and forces unilaterally out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. I had returned to the U.S. in late March more convinced than ever that one of the best ways to battle global terrorism is for the U.S. to put as much energy into brokering a negotiated settlement in the Middle East that provides the Palestinians with a homeland of their own and the Israelis with peace and secure borders. I phoned Secretary of State Rice in early April and then met with her in DC earlier this month to encourage her to do all that she could to jumpstart both the peace process and the Palestinian economy. How? By negotiating an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that allows greater freedom of movement of Palestinians and their goods in and out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. To her credit, Rice did just that two weeks ago in Jerusalem in a major breakthrough signed by both Sharon and Palestinian President Abbas.
Likud Party hardliners, already angered by Sharon's unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the West Bank were further inflamed by this latest concession agreed to by their party's cofounder. Sharon, rather than trying to calm down his angry Likud colleagues announced this past weekend that he was abandoning the party he helped to create over three decades ago. Instead, Prime Minister Sharon today founded a brand new centrist party simply called "Forward," through which he will seek to build a grand coalition to govern Israel as it seeks to move toward a permanent peace settlement.
If that wasn't enough excitement for one day, back at our hotel later tonight, we met with Dr. Salam Fayyad, finance minister for the Palestinian Authority who will be retiring from this post later this week. He shared with us that earlier today when Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank tried to vote in the Palestinian primary, voting was disrupted in many places by Palestinian gunmen firing weapons, effectively putting those elections on hold.
It's never dull in Israel or in the Middle East, and today was no exception. The characters are extraordinary and bigger than life, too. Here's Ariel Sharon, I thought as our meeting with him began earlier today. Now, 78 years old, Sharon once again stands poised to lead his country. At the age of 14, he was a company commander during the 1930's in Israel's war of independence. At the age of 26, he led all of Israel's commandos. In the years since, he became Israel's top general and led his country to victories in several Israeli-Arab wars before co-founding the Likud Party and going on to become his country's prime minister. He is widely expected to be successful in establishing a new centrist party and in brokering a final settlement with the Palestinians. He just might succeed too, working with Palestinian leaders like President Abbas and Dr. Salam Fayyad.
At the end of our meeting with Sharon, I stayed behind for a minute to ask him one final question. That question was, "To what do you attribute the remarkable success and staying power in this political cauldron called Israel?" He thought for a moment, smiled, and simply said, "I don't give up." And I thought as we left, neither should we.
WEBSITE - November 21, 2005
Welcome to my new website. We've given the site a new look and added features that we hope will make it more useful and easier for you to navigate.
Some things have moved around or work differently, so we hope you'll spend a few minutes exploring the new layout. As with most changes, there could be some bumps along the way. That's why we want to hear from you - what works, what doesn't - as we continue to improve the site. email me >>
The most noticeable change is the overall look and layout of the website. We've made the toolbar easier to navigate and taken more screen space for news on the homepage, which will allow us to give you continual updates as major developments take place.
Other improved features include:
Carper's Corner. My new weblog provides me with a forum to express my personal thoughts about developments within the U.S. Senate and back home in Delaware.
Resource Center. This area of the homepage will allow me to highlight timely issues and provide you with helpful information on these issues.
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