Israeli envoy to UN: Obama must take care of U.S. before focusing on Mideast

Israel's first woman ambassador to the United Nations has some advice for U.S. president-elect Barack Obama when he takes office in January: Leave the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to the parties themselves.

"To start with, Obama will have so much to deal with inside [the U.S.] that the Middle East, including the important country of Israel... this will have to wait which I think is for the better," Gabriela Shalev told reporters recently.

"That's because we have to deal with our own problems without any pressure - not of the UN, not of the U.S., but it should be bilateral between the parties. This is our attitude," Shalev said.

Shalev also sees cracks in the longstanding Arab cold shoulder and animosity directed at Israel.

She pointed to the UN interfaith conference in mid-November, held at the initiative of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who listened to a speech by Israel's President Shimon Peres, something that had never happened before.

Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni also met privately with some Arab leaders during the two-day meeting in the General Assembly, and Shalev said she took part in some of the discussions. The Israelis refused to identify any of the Arabs, citing the sensitivity of the talks.

"The whole idea was to start some kind of a dialogue with the moderate Arab countries, and the UN is really the right place - not to do negotiations themselves, but all states are represented," Shalev said.

Israel already has low-level trade relations but no diplomatic ties with Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf state which has established itself as a regional peace-broker in recent years. In April, its leader, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, invited Livni to give the keynote speech at the Doha Forum on Democracy.

And at the UN General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting in late September, the foreign minister of Bahrain - a pro-Western island nation with Sunni rulers and a Shi'ite majority - created a stir when he said it was time to consider establishing an organization that would include all states in the Middle East, without exception to overcome long-standing differences and ensure stable and lasting peace.

When Foreign Minister Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa was asked afterward by the Arab daily Al-Hayat if it would include Israel, he replied, "with Israel, Turkey, Iran and Arab countries. Let them all sit together in one group...This is the only path to solve our problems."

Shalev, a 67-year-old law professor who speaks Arabic and spent her working life on university campuses in the U.S., Canada and Europe as well as in Israel, said she was warned that the UN was a very cold and hostile place, especially to Israel.

Israel has been the target of more UN resolutions than any other country, most criticizing its treatment of the Palestinians. A 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism was finally rescinded in December 1991.

"We became the whipping boy of the world," Shalev said.

But she said that "for some time, we saw that we can improve it - and it's improving in some areas."

During her first three months as Israel's top diplomat at the UN, Shalev said her Arab colleagues have treated her with respect ? "maybe because of my gray hair, maybe because I am from academia, but I think it's also because I'm a woman. You know Arabs treat women with a lot of respect."

When the U.S. and British ambassadors gave lunches in her honor and asked who to invite, Shalev said "I always asked for the Palestinian observer [Riyad Mansour] - he's very nice and we're friends, more than colleagues - the Jordanian ambassador and the ambassador from Oman."

"It's easier for me to connect to them than some of the other ambassadors," she added. "We have a lot in common. I can approach them in Arabic."

But Shalev said she also has learned very quickly that diplomacy is double-talk.

At a dinner for new ambassadors, Shalev said Turkey's UN envoy deliberately sat her next to the ambassador from one of the not so moderate Arab countries, which she refused to identify.

"We had a wonderful talk all through the evening," she said. "We talked about peace and the Middle East. We found a lot of things in common."

When she told her Israeli colleagues about the discussion, they told her that the Arab ambassador would not shake her hand if he saw her in the corridor at the United Nations.

Two days later, Shalev said she saw the ambassador at the UN. "He nodded his head, and he was not as nice and friendly as the evening, and I understand it."

"Maybe people are watching, and you shouldn't be too friendly," she said. "So there are two levels."

Shalev said she knows that the Arabs are not going to change the rhetoric inside the General Assembly, but "it makes life nicer, not to be combative and hostile. We have enough of it."

For more than 50 years, Israel was barred from membership in any of the UN regional groups, which control membership on UN bodies. That changed in 2000 when the U.S. pushed to have Israel accepted in the UN regional group of European, North American and other countries. This month, Israel holds the rotating chairmanship of the group, known as WEOG, and Shalev will speak on its behalf at Wednesday's General Assembly commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

While there may be disappointment that Israel and the Palestinians will not reach the peace settlement their leaders and President George W. Bush hoped for by the end of the year, Shalev stressed that negotiations are continuing despite the volatile situation in the Middle East.

"You must understand that the clock in the Middle East does not tick like a Swiss clock," she said. "We have a different time...and you can't push it."

For one thing, Israel will hold elections in February and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will need to stand for re-election, though no date has been set.

At last month's interfaith conference, Peres had rare praise for the Saudi monarch, saying his initiative to end the Arab-Israeli conflict inspired hope that all countries in the Middle East could live in peace.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal expressed disappointment that Peres only talked positively about parts of the Arab peace plan, which calls for Arab recognition of the Jewish state in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from all lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Saud said it was a package deal that couldn't be divided.

"He also has his people to answer to - extremists in the foreign world," Shalev said when asked about the Saudi response. "I think Saudi Arabia with the initiative is trying, maybe successfully, to pose itself as a different call against the extremists, Iran, Libya."