State blog solicits views on hot-button issues

The State Department has crossed a new frontier.

For decades, most of its interaction with the public consisted of speeches and occasional question-and-answer sessions, at which officials explained U.S. policies.

Now the department is soliciting outside views on some of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies, such as those on Iran, North Korea and Cuba, in a series of Web discussions on its official blog, called “Dipnote.”

It does not, however, intend to consider any of the opinions that it receives in policy-making.

Because of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to the Middle East last week, one of the latest questions is: “Should the U.S. engage Hamas in the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians?”

“The whole idea behind the blog is to try to build a community of people who are interested in reading about and discussing and providing their inputs on matters of foreign policy,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

“There are some instances where you want to understand what’s going on out in the public,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you are doing a poll or taking a survey and you’re changing the policy.”

Most responses to the Hamas question so far have been negative and in support of the long-standing U.S. policy of not talking with terrorists.

“No, it’s clear that Hamas is not interested in peace,” wrote one respondent, who identified himself as Art in California.

Several bloggers expressed amazement that the State Department would be asking such a question, saying, “Are you people nuts?” and “What is the matter with you people?”

“I’m torn,” wrote Matt in North Carolina. “On the one hand, Hamas is clearly a terrorist organization, the type of entity we just don’t deal with. On the other hand, they are representatives for Gaza Palestine people. What other voice do they have? What a dilemma!”

Yavuz in New Jersey was categorical that Washington should engage Hamas “without a doubt,” but “maybe we should do it through some back channel or some sort of multilateral framework.”

Many of the views reflected Miss Rice’s Middle East trip, during which she accused Hamas of trying to undermine an effort to establish a Palestinian state by the end of the year, an effort begun at a peace conference in Annapolis in November. Yesterday, Miss Rice met at the State Department with her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni.

Hopes for a wider truce in the Gaza Strip emerged yesterday after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the army to scale back operations in Gaza in response to a sharp drop in Palestinian rocket fire.

Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel, which has responded with military assaults that have killed civilians as well as militants.

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