Observer

On Friday 18 May I met Jimmy Carter in his office at the Carter Centre in Atlanta. With its sleek wood panelling and view on to a careful garden of apparently impenetrable calm, the place seemed sealed off from time. There were three Warhol screenprints of Carter from 1975, when he ran for office, and the ex-president himself, though now a white-haired 82 year-old, spoke with the famously lilting voice that threw one back more than a quarter of a century. As he sat, one foot propped on a glass coffee table, toes tapping with casual mastery a large world atlas, he spoke of George Bush's appalling record in the Middle East.

I was there to talk to Carter about his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (the 21st he has written since he left office in 1981), and he was firm in his view that - thanks to the current administration - the situation in 'the most volatile region of the world' is the worst it has ever been. The war in Iraq, he made clear, has cemented Arab animosity towards the United States and Israel, strengthened Iran, and given Hamas and Hizbollah new life. 'This is the first administration since Israel became a nation that hasn't made any real effort to have peace talks,' he told me. 'We haven't had a single day of peace talks now in six years and five months. It's left a vacuum there, and vacuums are always filled with increased violence.'

I asked whether there had been any response from the White House to his book or his views, and his blue eyes took on an unreadable twinkle - was it triumph or ruefulness at the predictability of it all? 'No,' he said, 'not a word'.

The next day, the world was struck with a rhetorical double-whammy from the man I had just met. In a phone interview with an Arkansas newspaper, Carter was asked to compare Bush's foreign policy with that of Richard Nixon. He replied that 'as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history'. The same day, James Naughtie asked Carter on Radio 4's Today what he thought of Tony Blair's relationship with Bush. He said he thought it was 'abominable; loyal, blind, apparently subservient'.

Asked about these comments Bush shrugged them off, saying this was 'just what happens when you are president', but last Sunday - two days after Carter had told me the administration had said not a word about his criticisms - Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto made the first official statement about Carter. 'I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless and personal criticism is out there,' he told the assembled press in Crawford, Texas - adding, for good measure: 'I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments.'

Is Carter a valiant truth-teller, or a dangerous loose cannon? Conservatives this past week have been happy to embrace the latter view. The New Republic's editor-in-chief, Marty Peretz, said when Carter's Palestine book was published in the US late last year that the former president, who famously brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s, would 'go down in history as a Jew-hater'. Last week he added that 'besides his other sins Carter is a downright liar'. Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, said that 'worst in history' was 'a title for which [Carter] has himself been actively contending since 1976'. Thus, an unlikely side-effect of Carter's comments was that Peretz and Hitchens, sworn enemies for a quarter of a century, were suddenly united. 'Carter brought together [Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat and [Israeli prime mister Menachem] Begin,' Carter's former speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg told me, speaking of the Camp David Accords of 1978, 'and now he's brought together Hitchens and Peretz - you can't say he didn't deserve his Nobel Peace Prize.'

To his supporters, the only surprise was that in a television interview the following Monday, Carter attempted to retract some of his statement, appearing to regret breaking an unspoken rule - that past presidents do not insult current incumbents. 'I thought he was holding back,' Carter's former communications director Jerry Rafshoon told me later. 'Just foreign policy? How about domestic policy? How about everything? There's a misconception that ex-presidents aren't supposed to talk about a current administration. But he's been out of office almost 30 years, and he thinks the country is being hurt by this president: why should he hold back? I mean, what is the statute of limitations on keeping your mouth shut?'

Contrary to what his opponents would have us believe, Carter did not seem when I met him like a man who was losing his marbles. He was wry, precise, quick to smile, candid and easy in his demeanour. Indeed, a story has been going round the Carter Centre about his phenomenally good health. A recent intern was told that Carter would answer questions during his morning jog. The intern was not a runner, but calculating that she could hardly fail to keep up with an 82- year-old, met him at the appointed time. Carter dashed off. The breathless intern was still struggling to catch up when a secret service detail rolled up behind and grunted: 'Just get in the car!'

At times he can come across as perhaps intentionally innocent. There are echoes of the method used by the great TV detective Columbo in Carter's account of his first meeting with Yasser Arafat in 1990, when he asks Arafat what are the 'purposes' of the PLO, and Arafat, dumbfounded, hands Carter a pamphlet. Hertzberg describes this effect as 'creatively naive', and recalls that Carter often asked this kind of 'back-to-first-principles question'. 'Early in his administration he asked why we had so many nuclear weapons. You know: "Why do we need more than a couple of hundred? Isn't that enough to totally destroy the Soviet Union and everyone else?" It was a very good question.'

Carter has always been an outsider - a maverick, even. That was why people voted for him. He was a born-again peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, who had been governor of his home state and won the presidency with a huge southern and black vote. Everyone knew about his close-knit relatives, his moral values, his rural childhood. His strong marriage to his childhood sweetheart Rosalynn - said to be the prettiest girl in Plains - and their three boys, Jack, Chip and Jeff, and daughter, Amy, was upheld as a model nuclear family. He stayed in supporters' homes during the campaign; he famously carried his own luggage. He understood the military establishment, having graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, yet he was not part of the Washington old boys' club that Nixon had given such a bad name. 'Carter seems a mystery,' the historian Garry Wills wrote in the New York Review of Books in August 1976, 'His rise is unprecedented in our modern politics. Yet he is both mysterious and necessary.'

That Carter left the White House under a cloud is not disputed, even by his fans. Whether he deserved it, however, is still a subject of debate. Even Henry Kissinger later said he thought Carter had got a bad rap. But in 1980 the economy was a disaster, and - most damningly - the Iran hostage crisis, which had been going on for a year, had suffered from his failed rescue mission. When Ronald Reagan won the election, Carter became the first elected president to lose a bid to stay in the White House since Herbert Hoover lost in 1932.

In words that Hertzberg wrote for him, Carter bid farewell to his people on 14 January 1981. 'As I return home to the South where I was born and raised, I am looking forward to the opportunity to reflect and further to assess - I hope with accuracy - the circumstances of our times.' And that is exactly what he has done. Whatever anyone thinks of his time in office, it is widely accepted that Carter has had the most successful post-presidency in the nation's history. The man who lost in 1980 had become, at least by 1994, when he prevented an all-out war in Haiti, an international man of mystery. In his work at the Carter Centre, now celebrating its 25th year, he has monitored elections all over the world to ensure that democracy is upheld, fought for human rights, for peace, for food, housing, health. Often criticised in earlier years for being soft on dictators, Carter's diplomacy has nevertheless served the image of his country better, probably, than the work of any president since he left the White House.

In his memoir, Keeping Faith, Carter wrote that he had spent more of his time in office working towards peace in the Middle East than on any other international problem. As we sit in the Carter Centre, his foot still edging that atlas across the table, I ask whether - given all his work in other situations of international delicacy - that has been true of the period since. 'Well,' he says, 'since I left the White House, I've probably spent more time in Sudan than in the Middle East, because we can only go to the Middle East when I'm able to get permission from the White House. And, uh, that permission has been spasmodic.' He flashes a faint, wry smile. 'To say the least.'

But, he says, he is 'immersed in the Mid-East situation constantly', and has monitored all three Palestinian elections. When Carter's book was published, it was both incendiary and a bestseller. The Anti-Defamation League, led by the pro-Israeli Abraham Foxman, ran large ads in all the major US newspapers attacking the book for engaging in anti-Semitism.

Carter says he was not surprised that his use of the word 'apartheid' in the title caused such a furore, and defends it: 'The word is the most accurate available to describe Palestine. Apartheid is when two different people live in the same land, and they are forcibly segregated, and one dominates or persecutes the other. That's what's happening in Palestine: so the word is very, very accurate. It's used widely, and every day, in Israel.' If the focus on the word itself detracted from some of the issues he discusses in detail - which Carter concedes it may have - 'it was more than compensated for by the fact that it precipitated national - and even an international - discussion or debate'.

But the 'ad-hominem attacks on me - people accusing me of being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel,' he says, were more of a surprise. The Oscar-winning film-maker Jonathan Demme has been following Carter on his book tour and beyond, for a documentary due out later this year. 'It was fascinating,' Demme later tells me, 'to see Carter come forth with all these deep-seated and well-informed feelings about the situation in Palestine, and to see him suddenly be accused of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli feelings. There was a moment in the tour where there had been a blistering barrage of stuff, and I said to him as we got out of the car: "It's awful to see you being vilified in so many undeserved ways." He looked at me, and said: "If I thought I was wrong about anything I'm saying, I'd be devastated by the way I'm being attacked. But I believe in what I'm saying, so it really doesn't hurt me at all." You could see it did hurt, but I think he was describing what gets him through.'

Carter acknowledges to me that it hurt, but brushes off the criticism, saying: 'it's a small group'. 'You know,' he adds, 'there's no possibility in our country of a member of Congress or a candidate for President saying that they're going to take a balanced position between Israel and the Palestinians - or to speak out with concern about Palestinian human rights: that's impossible in this country.' (Hertzberg confirms that Carter is in a gross minority among politicians: 'Carter's outspoken sympathy for the Palestinians is such that it'll probably keep him from being able to give a speech at the next Democratic convention,' he suggests. 'He'll say what he thinks no matter who likes it or doesn't like it - that's the prime example.')

Carter first travelled to Israel in 1973 as Governor of Georgia. He left Israel feeling optimistic, and that the 'plight' of the Arabs 'seemed of relative insignificance to me'. I ask if, in retrospect, that was naive. 'Well,' he replies, 'the Arabs were not being persecuted then. There were a total of 1,500 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and they had been on kibbutzim - individual farms that they had acquired - for decades. And that was before there was any massive effort by the Israeli government to colonise the West Bank in order to confiscate it. I met with the top leaders in Israel, and all of them presumed that that land belonged to the Palestinians, and there was no concept at that point, at least by the ones with whom I met, that they would simply take over that land and keep it permanently, as it seems to be now.'

In 1977, two months after he took office, Carter made a speech declaring that a homeland needed to be found for Palestinian refugees. From the insignificance they held for him in 1973 to making such a controversial statement four years later was quite a journey, one to which Carter added in 1978, when he negotiated at Camp David for 'full autonomy' for the Palestinians. (Although the PLO would not take part in the discussion, even through an intermediary, Anwar Sadat made it a precondition of his own involvement that the rights of the Palestinians form a large part of the talks.) Yet one of the most interesting facets of his book is Carter's apparent admission that it was only after he left office that he became closely acquainted with the concrete and continuing difficulties suffered by the Palestinians. I ask if that is in fact true.

'That's true,' he says, 'Unfortunately, while I was president, the United States had a binding commitment not to deal directly with the PLO. So that was a restraint on me. And it was 1990 before I actually met with Arafat.'

Professor Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, tells me that Carter 'was completely right: he had the right instincts, he had the right advice, he had the courage needed. But Camp David was a terrible step in the wrong direction, in my view. I think it's to his discredit that he then failed to get Begin to do what we all know Begin wasn't intending to do.' There was nothing in the Camp David Accords about the Israeli settlements, and while Carter had Menachem Begin's word that there would be a freeze on any further settlements, it was an 'omission', Carter admits with some understatement, not to have got that part of the deal in writing. Almost immediately, Begin went against even the agreement he had signed, with the result that the Camp David Accords, for which all three men were eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, effectively weakened the Palestinian position by removing Egypt, its strongest ally, from the equation. In 1981, Sadat was assassinated.

Five years after they met at Camp David - 10 years after his first trip to Israel - Carter visited Begin, and asked how he could have reneged on what they agreed. Begin did not look at him, and made it clear that the meeting was over. As Carter left the small, shabby room, he noticed a larger, brightly lit one adjacent to it that was empty. The number on the door was the number of the very UN Resolution Begin had broken: 242.

Carter says now that had he been in power when that meeting occurred, he would have withheld aid to Israel - something he had threatened to do - with success - in the past, and which Reagan was unwilling to do. He acknowledges that his accords weakened the Palestinians 'in a way', but only because they themselves 'didn't have a clear voice. Later, when I met Arafat, he said it was a bad mistake for the PLO not to have been fully supportive of the Camp David Accords. But it was a completely different atmosphere for Arab countries. In fact, it wasn't until 2002 that unanimously the Arab countries said they'd accept Israel and its right to exist within its recognised borders.'

I suggest to Carter that Bill Clinton doesn't come off terribly well in the book. 'Well,' he sighs, 'I've had somewhat of an altercation with Clinton's representatives, who say I don't give Clinton adequate credit in the book. You know, I give Clinton credit for making his best effort, but the proposals that Clinton made were never clear. And both the Israelis and the Palestinians accepted the principles that Clinton put forward with enormous caveats. Later, it was politically acceptable for the Israelis and for Washington to say: we agreed, but Arafat didn't agree. In fact, neither one of them agreed.'

Jonathan Demme tells me he thinks of his film, about which he has not really spoken before, as reminiscent of the classic western High Noon, starring Gary Cooper. 'My sense of that is, Carter put his badge on to come forth into the community to talk about justice as it pertains to Palestine, and, as in High Noon, almost everybody fell all over each other in their desire to distance themselves from his message of peace. He soldiered on, without allies, with mounting foes.' Carter, Demme says, is 'a tough son of a bitch. You know, he's got a gorgeous smile, and he'll cry at the drop of a hat if something touches him, but he is one tough dude.'

Towards the end of our interview, I ask Carter which of the current presidential candidates he thinks most likely to move towards negotiating peace in the Middle East. He still has hopes for Barack Obama, but won't decide who to vote for until he has a chance to speak to each of them privately. Because, he concludes, 'I won't even decide who to support privately until I assess their attitude toward the Middle East. That's the number one issue for me - more than energy, more than Iraq.'

To the White House

Early life

Born James Earl Carter Jr on 1 October 1924 in Plains, Georgia, to peanut warehouser Earl Carter and nurse Lillian Gordy Carter. Graduated from US Naval Academy and married Rosalynn Smith in 1946. They have three sons and one daughter.

Presidential highs

Carter, a Democrat, began his four-year term as the 39th US President in 1977. His successful treaties with Panama gave it control of the Panama Canal by 1999. In 1978 Carter's Camp David Accords ended the 30-year state of war between Egypt and Israel. He included women and ethnic minorities in his cabinet.

Presidential lows

Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter, having campaigned on the 'misery index' of Carter's failures. Inflation rose more than 6 per cent during his term in office. Interest rates twice exceeded 20 per cent in 1980. On 4 November 1979, Iranian students stormed the Tehran US embassy and took diplomatic staff hostage. The situation was not resolved during Carter's presidency.

After the White House

Rosalynn and Jimmy established the Carter Presidential Centre in 1982 to 'advance human rights and alleviate unnecessary suffering'. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. Carter has written books on topics including his presidency, the Middle East and his Christianity.

Liam O'Driscoll

· Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter is published by Simon and Schuster To order it for £16.99 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885. The former president will give a speech when he receives an honorary degree at Oxford University on 20 June