Bush spoke, but it was Condie's Middle East moment

Edmund O'Sullivan

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The speech mattered more than the speaker at Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel on 13 January as President Bush delivered, for the first time in the GCC, a complete statement of America's goals for the region.

Bush's visit, his first as president to countries that will shape the region's future, was overdue. The speech contained no surprises and it was read out with no elaboration. There were no questions and not much enthusiasm among the listeners. The auditorium was little more than two-thirds full. But Bush, in the eighth year of his presidency, was in the GCC at last.

The audience included a sprinkling of UAE ministers and top business people. The deputy ruler of Ras al-Khaimah and member of the supreme federal council, Shaikh Saud al-Saqr, sat in the front row with the UAE's Economy Minister, Shaikha Lubna al-Qasimi, and Khaldoon al-Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabi's Executive Affairs Authority.

But the most important person in the room - after Bush himself - was between America's UAE ambassador and federal Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, directly in front of the speaker's podium. It was as if US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was the main target of Bush's words, rather than its principal author.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, ideologues deposed the State Department as master of America's Middle East policy. At the time, Rice, then the president's National Security Advisor and a member of the White House team, was seen as part of the axis between Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that was behind the Iraq invasion of March 2003.

Outmanoeuvred and out his depth, Secretary of State Colin Powell clung to office but lost his purpose as the war unfolded.

His successor by her actions has shown she was always more of a diplomat than a devotee to the idea that the US, as the sole superpower, had the right to act unilaterally. Rice found an ally in Robert Gates, who replaced Rumsfeld in the Pentagon in November 2006 and was no open critic of the Iraq Study Group report published the following month.

The Annapolis Arab-Israel peace process, launched in November, is the kind of initiative the State Department favours. Before Rice became secretary of state, Bush would never have said that a settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could even be achieved, let alone in little more than a year.

Bush's January Middle East tour is Annapolis' earliest fruit and a reward to the GCC for supporting the initiative.

Following his first official visit to Israel, Bush travelled to the Gulf. His subsequent visit to Egypt appears to be an afterthought, a sign of Cairo's decline in Washington's estimation. In contrast, the GCC states, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular, were the priority. The president's coming was an expression of an established fact. GCC countries are now the most important partners in America's new Middle East diplomacy and will remain so for the indefinite future.

The visit also demonstrated that the 9/11 chapter is now largely closed. No less than 17 of the 19 men who perpetrated the atrocity were from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In the six years since then, both countries have demonstrated to Washington's satisfaction that it could have no firmer allies in its war against terror, in bringing stability to Iraq, in promoting Middle East peace and in helping to grease the wheels of the world economy. This is an obvious conclusion, but it took Rice to make Bush see it.

The president's GCC tour may not be a turning point in US policy, but it is part of a fresh start for America and the region. Momentum is building behind the State Department's strategy. It is unlikely that the winner of November's presidential poll will want, or have the energy, to shift course radically.

Bush spoke in Abu Dhabi in January. But it was Condie's Middle East moment.