BUSH: PEACE DEPENDS ON DEMOCRATIZING PALESTINIANS

Bush: Peace depends on democracy
Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not dependent on borders or on settlements but on Palestinian democracy, President Bush said.

“Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a settlement,” Bush said Wednesday on a state visit to Canada. “This approach has been tried before without success. As we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy.” Bush’s emphasis suggests that he will focus on Palestinian democratization more than on Israel’s compliance with U.S. calls for a settlement freeze.

SEE ALSO: Democracy, Then Peace
"The Bush administration will respond to the death of Yasser Arafat by pressing for Palestinian reform rather than a resumption of the final-status negotiation with Israel," the New York Sun reports:

In the last 10 days, senior White House officials have fanned out across Washington to quietly inform Congress, diplomats, think tank analysts, and key interest groups that the president intends to press the next Palestinian leader to make key structural changes to insure the rule of law, effective counterterrorism, and transparency before reviving the negotiations that stalled in the final weeks of the Clinton presidency.