Lugar's (R-Indiana) speech yesterday at the Brookings Institute...

(Indiana ought to boot this guy OUT OF OFFICE as soon as possible)
...during the questions at end...lugar rattled on about how 'bush* should stay the course in Iraq' that everything was WONDERFUL in Iraq, so peaceful that bremer is going to leave on June 30th...no problems at all...the speech emphasized how OTHER COUNTRIES should join together to PAY FOR THE BUSH* MESS in the Middle East....
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you can listen to lugar by flipping through the photo/descriptions in the middle of this page (C-Span)....
http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Current_Event&Code=terr&ShowVidNum=6&Rot_Cat_CD=911_Resp&Rot_HT=&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=720&ShowVidDesc=#


title:
A New Partnership for the Greater Middle East: Combating Terrorism, Building Peace.
by Richard G. Lugar.

-snips-

At it's June Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, the G-8 (the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy) should outline a plan for the G-8 to engage with the greater Middle East in a way that allows the nations of the region to set their own priorities for the new millennium.

Proposal

I propose a grant-making Greater Middle East Twenty First Century Trust, sponsored by the G-8. It would be modeled on the principles of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the G-8 Africa Action Plan, and the United States' Millennium Challenge Account. The Twenty First Century Trust would united the G-8 countries with donor countries in the Greater Middle East in a quest for political, economic, and educational modernization. The donors would pool resources to deliver grants and would work together to define the funding criteria based in part, on the high priority needs identified in the United Nations' Arab Human Development Reports, which were written by Arab scholars. Vigorous two-way interaction between donors and recipients is vital: change cannot be imposed from the outside.

Under MCA, countries must demonstrate that they are 'ruling justly, investing in their people, and establishing economic freedom'. The MCA will use independent indicators to judge a candidate country's fitness in such realms as corruption, rule of law, political rights and trade policy.....



...we must realize that Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral disengagement has created an opportunity that we should seize to generate new attitudes and approaches to ending the violence....

The Israel withdrawal, as a practical matter, along with Israel's construction of a security fence, will reduce the opportunities for Palestinians to attack Israelis, and the need for Israeli military checkpoints and other intrusions into Palestinian daily life, which do so much to inflame anger.

Conclusion

In my view, the G-8 Summit in Sea Island at the beginning of June represents an opportunity to focus the world on modernization needs in the Greater Middle East. This challenge should be addressed by the G-8, and it should include the participation, contribution, and vision of those in the Middle East. By the same toke, the NATO summit in Istanbul at the end of June would be the right venue for framing a transatlantic security structure that extends throughout the Middle East.