Return of a Middle East Wire-Puller – Boutros Boutros-Ghali

A choice piece of intelligence that Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak is unlikely to have shared with the departing US president Bill Clinton when they met in the White House Monday concerns an enigmatic international figure the Americans have no reason to love: former UN Secretary General, the Egyptian diplomat and academic Boutros Boutros-Ghali. What they did discuss was a question that must exercise them both. How did it happen that the most potent intelligence and political resources invested by the United States, with all its unparalleled might, and Israel, the strongest military and economic power in the Middle East, in bringing about peace, ran into a blank wall at every hand. Clearly, as debkafile reported repeatedly in the past weeks, Clinton has more or less washed his hands of the effort to shift the Middle East peace process in his last two months in office. Reports to the contrary emanate from interested parties in Washington and Israel and do not hold up. But the puzzle remains and the sense of failure must dog the American and the Israeli leaders.
One answer to the mystery may be found in that mysterious intelligence file.
debkafile‘s political and intelligence sources report that the conclusion reached by the compilers of this report is that the man pulling the wires behind Yasser Arafat’s diplomatic and military strategy, organizing his many travels and international contacts, advising him to revive the intifada, demand an international observer force, and brokering his renewed intimacy with Saddam Hussein, is none other than that wily, behind-the-scenes Middle East plotter, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Anwar Sadat, the first Arab ruler to make peace with Israel in 1977.
These days, Boutros-Ghali divides his time between Geneva and Switzerland, where he has established residence. His only real official function is that of Head of the Francophone Group of Nations, namely third world nations with an affinity to French culture, much like the British Commonwealth of Nations. He was given the job by an old crony, Jacques Chirac, before he became President of France. Ghali’s role as Arafat’s foremost strategic adviser was discovered by Israeli intelligence at the abortive October 4 Paris meeting, when Secretary Allbright tried to get Arafat and Barak to sign a truce. An accord was drafted by CIA director George Tenet and Yasser Arafat, and the latter promised to sign it. But to the astonishment of all the other parties, President Chirac intervened at this point and persuaded Arafat not to sign. According to the intelligence in Israel’s hands, the man who persuaded the French President to take this step was Boutros-Ghali, an unofficial Middle East adviser to President Chirac. Later, at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit attended by President Clinton, Arafat was observed in intensive telephone communications with Boutros-Ghali, who apparently guided his steps there too. This time, the matter was brought to the attention of the Americans.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources add that both Israel and the United States are in possession of intelligence data exposing Boutros-Ghali in active liaison between Arafat and the Iiraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and between the Iraqi ruler and President Chirac.