Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Conversation on the Middle East with Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams

From The Washington Institute, 13 Dec 2012:

(Washington, DC) Two long-serving U.S. troubleshooters in the Middle East -- Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams -- received The Washington Institute's prestigious Scholar-Statesman Award* before nearly 400 guests at a gala dinner Thursday, December 6, 2012, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City....
...Ross, who served as special Middle East negotiator to President Clinton and Iran policy advisor to President Obama, is currently counselor to The Washington Institute. Abrams, deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Despite differences of party, Dennis and Elliott share a passion for peace and freedom, and a keen awareness of what it takes to build a peace that is both secure and lasting," said Chairman Howard P. Berkowitz...
...In an unscripted conversation with Washington Institute Executive Director Robert Satloff during the event, Abrams and Ross reflected on their careers in foreign policy and discussed current events in the Middle East, including Palestinian-Israeli affairs, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the challenge of Egypt under Islamist rule.



[This YouTube Playlist includes a 7-minute presentation of the awards, then the 43-minute video of the impromptu interview by Robert Staloff. It is well-worth the time...]

A complete transcript and video of the conversation is available here....

*Previous Scholar-Statesman honorees were: President
Bill Clinton; British prime minister Tony Blair; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Secretary of State George P. Shultz; human rights activists Natan Sharansky and Saad Eddin Ibrahim; and eminent historian Bernard Lewis.

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