US embassy cable - 04AMMAN688

C O N F I D E N T I A L AMMAN 000688 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/27/2014 
TAGS: PREL, KPAL, IS, JO, KTER 
SUBJECT: JORDANIANS NOTE THAT STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH 
DOES NOT ADDRESS MEPP 
 
REF: AMMAN 629 
 
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires David Hale for Reasons 1.5 (b), (d) 
 
 1.  (U) President Bush's state of the union address has 
received substantial coverage in all major dailies.  While 
many of these reports were mostly factual in nature, several 
prominent articles highlighted the absence of references to 
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as the Democrats' 
criticism of the speech.  The day following the address, one 
Arabic daily, for example, included a front-page title line 
stating, "U.S. President ignores the Palestinian issue in his 
state of the union address," while another daily's front-page 
report read, "The Democrats and the American press criticize 
Bush's state of the union address." 
 
2.  (C) Outside of the media, there was little public 
reaction to the President's speech.  When PolCouns asked 
vocal MP Mamdouh Al-Abbadi (East Banker, Amman-3rd District) 
for his view on the address, he opined that President Bush's 
failure to mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not 
bode well for the peace process.  He jokingly expressed 
relief, however, that the President had not named any new 
"evil" countries for a possible future U.S. invasion. 
 
3.  (C) Similarly, the head of the International Relations 
Committee in the Jordanian Senate, Fawwaz Abul Ghanam, 
expressed disappointment to PolCouns that President Bush had 
not mentioned the Palestinian issue, asserting that this 
proves the U.S. has walked away from the peace process.  Dr. 
Duried Mahasneh, a former government official who helped 
negotiate Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, told PolOff that 
he was disheartened by the speech's exclusion of the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and opined that President Bush 
was not going to apply any pressure upon Israel to implement 
its roadmap obligations during a U.S. election year. 
 
4.  (C) COMMENT:  The lack of public evidence of forward 
movement in the peace process, combined with the absence of 
any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in President 
Bush's state of the union address, has left many Jordanians 
wondering whether the U.S. is truly committed to 
implementation of the roadmap.  The return of John Wolf to 
the region and renewed U.S. diplomatic engagement could help 
counter these doubts.  End Comment. 
 
Visit Embassy Amman's classified web site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/amman or access the site 
through the State Department's SIPRNET home page. 
HALE