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June 4, 2004/Sivan 15 5764, Vol. 56, No. 37
Rabbis want progress on peace talks
MICHAEL E. BERGER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - Leaders of three Jewish religious denominations say they appreciate President Bush's solid support for Israel but want the United States to broker a peace accord.
The leaders of the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements joined Christian and Muslim counterparts June 1 in urging Secretary of State Colin Powell to increase U.S. engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to name a new envoy. Orthodox Jews were not represented at the meeting.
The group - the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative - wants the Bush administration to work within the "road map" peace plan, which was crafted by the United States with the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
"The road map is the best hope for peace and we have really gotten sidetracked," Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Reform movement's Central Con-ference of American Rabbis, said at a news conference after the meeting.
The road map remains the official policy of the Bush administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it has been all but abandoned, and peacemaking has been stalled.
Despite their call for progress on the road map, the Jewish denominational lead-ers said they support Israel's plans for disengagement from the Palestinians.
"If the United States is perceived as being one-sided, the opportunity to bring the parties together will not be available as an option," Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, told JTA.
Rabbi Amy Small, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, said in an interview that she believed the road map was never given a full chance to succeed, and that an envoy was needed to hold the parties accountable.
"If there is an envoy on the ground, working with the parties, we can have progress," she said.
The State Department said Powell was receptive to the group's ideas. He agreed with the need for an envoy but suggested that now was not the right time.
"He was not in any way adverse or opposed to the appointment of high-level envoys," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said after the meeting, but the envoy "needed to be appointed at a time and to work at a time when there's really something to do, when there's really some way of making progress by using such an envoy."
The religious leaders countered by suggesting that an envoy could create the right environment for diplomatic progress.
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