Bush Silent, but Others Speak Out on Tibet

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and SOMINI SENGUPTA

WASHINGTON — China’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet is having powerful political reverberations in Washington, where the White House is weighing how far to go in condemning the Chinese government, even as it defends President Bush’s decision to attend the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.

In the meantime, the presidential candidates are speaking out, as is the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. On Friday, Ms. Pelosi visited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, at his headquarters in Dharamsala, India — and poked a finger in the eye of Beijing.

Describing the clashes in the past week between Chinese security forces and Tibetan demonstrators as “a challenge to conscience of the world,” Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”

If it seemed like a direct challenge to Mr. Bush, he did not take the bait.

“At this point, there is no doubt that the Chinese government knows where President Bush stands,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman. He said the White House had no comment on Ms. Pelosi’s visit.

The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since 1959, when China crushed an uprising in Tibet, his homeland. He has been pressing, without success, to return to China to advocate for greater cultural and religious freedom for his followers. China, though, has branded him a “splittist” and has accused him of masterminding the current wave of protests — a charge Ms. Pelosi dismissed as nonsense on Friday.

It was unclear what Ms. Pelosi’s visit would yield for Tibetans. But for Ms. Pelosi, the timing was propitious. In front of a horde of television news cameras that had decamped all week to cover the Dalai Lama, she and her husband, Paul, descended the stairs of the main temple to huge applause, the 72-year-old Buddhist monk between them, holding their hands.

Nuns and schoolchildren waved American flags. The Dalai Lama ordered his followers to rise and offer Ms. Pelosi a standing ovation. One man held up a homemade placard that read, “Thank you for recognizing nonviolent struggle.”

The visit provoked a tart response from the Chinese ambassador to India, who depicted it as American interference. “We don’t allow anybody to meddle in China’s internal affairs,” the ambassador, Zhang Yan, told reporters in New Delhi, according to The Press Trust of India. “Any attempt to cause trouble to China is doomed to fail.”

Ms. Pelosi is hardly the only American politician taking China to task. On Friday, Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, traveling in France, warned that China’s behavior was “not acceptable” for a world power. Earlier in the week, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democratic presidential contenders, issued strong criticisms of China.

Mr. Bush, too, has made a strong show of solidarity with the Dalai Lama. In October, he met privately with the Tibetan leader at the White House and then attended a ceremony at the Capitol, where the Dalai Lama was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. It was the first time the two had appeared in public together, and the White House was well aware of the symbolism.

China analysts say the violence in Tibet demands that the president chart a careful course. “I think to the extent that he can work the issue privately, it’s better, frankly,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, an Asia specialist who worked at the National Security Council under President Clinton. “The public statements just make the Chinese dig in their heels all the more, make them more resolute in their repression.”

American presidents have historically found relations with China to be a delicate dance. But none more so than Mr. Bush, especially since September, when he met with China’s president, Hu Jintao, in Sydney, Australia, and accepted Mr. Hu’s invitation to attend the Beijing Olympics.

Mr. Bush has said that he wants to support American athletes and views the Games as a sporting event, but that he will use his attendance to put pressure on China to improve its human rights record. But human rights advocates have linked the Olympics with violence in the Darfur region of Sudan and have accused Mr. Bush of giving his imprimatur to a country that, in their view, is not exerting enough influence as a major buyer of Sudanese oil to stop what the White House has termed a genocide.

On Capitol Hill, two representatives, Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, and Neil Abercrombie, Democrat of Hawaii, are leading a push for a boycott of the Beijing Games. China analysts, though, say Mr. Bush has little choice but to attend, even if it means a political backlash at home.

“This is China’s coming out party,” said Michael Green, an Asia expert and former Bush administration official. “If he were to cancel, it would be such a loss of face for China that it would make working with them on issues from North Korea to human rights much more difficult.”

So far, Mr. Bush has stood firm.

“I’m going to the Olympics,” the president said last month, when Steven Spielberg, the filmmaker, announced that he was dropping out as an artistic adviser for the Games. “I view the Olympics as a sporting event. On the other hand, I have a little different platform than Steven Spielberg, so I get to talk to President Hu Jintao.”

If the violence in Tibet grows, however, the pressure could increase for Mr. Bush to take some kind of symbolic stand. The French foreign minister said this week that he would entertain the idea of skipping the Olympics opening ceremony — a symbolic gesture that would be less than a full boycott. Mr. Johndroe said such a step was not under discussion at the White House.

“We’re focused on ending the violence now,” he said, “not an event six months from now.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Somini Sengupta from Dharamsala, India.

Pentagon chief talks tough on Russia

By Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 17, 2008

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Sunday expressed frustration with Russian leaders about the pace of talks over a new U.S. missile defense site in Eastern Europe.

Gates, who will be joined in Moscow by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for two days of talks with Russian leaders starting today, said the Bush administration in October had offered a "very forward-leaning" proposal that would allow Russia to participate directly in the controversial new system.

"At some point, the Russians are going to have to decide whether they want to be true partners, which we're offering, or whether this is just all a sham game on their part to stall the whole deal," Gates told reporters aboard his plane en route to Moscow.

Gates' remarks were among the most pointed by a senior administration official about the stalled bilateral talks and reflected a growing frustration that the Kremlin may be looking to wait out the current administration in Washington, betting that Poland and the Czech Republic will not agree to allow the United States to begin construction on the sites without Russian acquiescence.

The missile defense system has become among the thorniest issues between Moscow and Washington, with senior Russian officials accusing the Bush administration of building the system to counter Russian ballistic missiles.

The Bush administration has vehemently denied the accusations, insisting the system is aimed at shooting down Iranian long-range missiles that could reach NATO allies in Western Europe and the U.S. mainland sometime in the next decade.

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Expansion Issues Divide NATO; Rice Urges More Troops

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2008; A12

BRUSSELS, March 6 -- Foreign ministers of the NATO alliance failed Thursday to narrow differences over whether to make interim membership overtures to Georgia and Ukraine, with some ministers pressing for the step and others arguing that it would antagonize Russia.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also urged allies to make firm commitments to add troops in Afghanistan, saying that alliance members cannot focus just on development work in the fragile country.

There was also no apparent movement in a dispute that has lasted more than 15 years between Greece and Macedonia over Macedonia's name. The issue threatens to block plans to bring the tiny Balkan republic into the alliance at a summit next month in Bucharest, Romania.

The 26-nation alliance, which has expanded rapidly in the past decade into Eastern Europe, faces two critical decisions on further enlargement.

One concerns Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet republics seeking membership, in part to escape Russian influence. In the meetings here, the diplomats were split over whether to grant the two countries an interim step, known as the "Membership Action Plan," with France and Germany among the leading skeptics.

Russia has warned that pursuit of membership by the two would antagonize their pro-Russia populations and possibly lead to civil war.

"In Russia we have a new president and I think the European Union wants to put its ties with Russia on another footing," said Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn. "We have to take the interests of others, not only the members of NATO, into account."

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner suggested that Russia's place in the world system was not given enough consideration. "France is not the only nation wanting to maintain a relationship with Russia as a great nation," he said.

U.S. officials have expressed cautious support for granting Ukraine and Georgia the interim status, but have made no official statement.

The second decision concerns full membership for three Balkan countries -- Macedonia, Albania and Croatia -- a step that alliance members hope will help bring stability to the volatile region. But Greece on Thursday once again threatened to veto a seat for Macedonia.

Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis reiterated Thursday that Athens believes the name "Republic of Macedonia" is a backdoor attempt to claim sovereignty over a Greek province named Macedonia.

Greece stands alone in NATO in its campaign against Macedonia. One U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was describing diplomatic conversations, said there was "considerable pressure in the room that this now be settled."

The ministers spent considerable time discussing a mission statement about Afghanistan that would help explain to their publics why NATO is fighting there.

There are 43,000 NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, but some operate only in relatively peaceful parts of the country. U.S. officials argue that NATO countries must contribute more troops, saying the alliance cannot be divided between those who fight and those who focus on development.

U.S. Struggles to Find Envoy, Hindering Effort to Stabilize Afghanistan

By Michael Abramowitz and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A13

The White House has been pushing since early fall to install a powerful new foreign envoy to oversee international reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. Last month it looked as though it had finally found its man: After a meeting in Kuwait, Hamid Karzai indicated he was ready to accept prominent British politician Paddy Ashdown for the assignment.

Less than two weeks later, the appointment collapsed after Karzai changed his mind -- the latest sign of tensions between the courtly Afghan president and the Western powers that have been seeking for nearly seven years to stabilize a country that was the breeding ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

U.S. officials have done little to disguise their displeasure with the recent turn of events, which has not only left them without a candidate but also imperiled their strategy of giving a single international envoy a robust mandate for Afghanistan. Over weeks of negotiations, the job has been whittled down from a statesman of stature who would influence decisions by NATO, the European Union and the United Nations to a more traditional role as envoy of the U.N. secretary general, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

"There's no ready, obvious replacement," said one senior U.S. official who is not authorized to speak publicly. "We thought [Ashdown] was best qualified, given his credentials and his experience and his ability to command attention, especially in European capitals."

Talking with reporters last week, Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South Asia, disputed the suggestion that the rejection of Ashdown meant that Karzai was obstructing progress.

"That is our partner and that's who we will work with, because that's who the people of Afghanistan chose," he said. "I think it's very clear that from our discussions with the Afghan government, even since Paddy Ashdown felt he had to withdraw his candidacy, that they, too, want to see better coordination, want to see strong international coordination."

U.S. and U.N. officials said they are still looking for an envoy. Among those said to be under consideration are Kai Eide, a senior Norwegian official with experience in the U.N. bureaucracy; Jan Kubis, the Slovak foreign minister; Hikmat Chetin, a senior Turkish diplomat with experience in Afghanistan; and Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister. President Bush discussed the search recently with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who will make the final appointment.

Still, Bush administration officials acknowledge that the episode has highlighted the inability of the United States and its allies to organize civilian reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, the focus of recent criticism by diplomats and a flurry of new reports.

Since the Taliban fell in 2001, the international community has provided about $15 billion to rebuild Afghanistan. But U.S. officials and outside experts say that there has been little coordination among the dozens of countries and international organizations helping to build roads and bridges, create a new police and justice system, and deal with narcotics production.

"There is a very clear need for a joining of the international military strategy with the international civilian strategy," said Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, who helped recruit Ashdown. "Countries that are extending assistance to Afghanistan are not extending assistance in a central, organized way right now."

The troubles with reconstruction are a companion to the more publicized military difficulties NATO is having in Afghanistan, where U.S. officials -- most prominently Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates -- have complained that some allies are unwilling to participate in the most violent fight against the Taliban. But many officials regard the civilian effort as perhaps even more critical to controlling Afghanistan's insurgency.

Asked recently to assess U.S. progress, a top U.S. official handling Afghanistan said: "Tactically on the security front, I would say we are winning."

"The challenge with Afghanistan is that's not good enough," added the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak more freely. "And it is on some of the other dimensions of the mission where we are not doing as well as we need to be. And mostly those have to do with the non-military . . . having to do with governance, economic development, reconstruction."

Norway first suggested a super-envoy in the fall of 2006, but it was not until last summer, as reports mounted of problems in Afghanistan, that U.S. officials began warming to the idea.

U.S. officials focused on Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats in Britain who impressed them with his service as the U.N. high representative in Bosnia from 2002 to 2006. The British quickly agreed.

But early on, U.N., U.S. and Afghan officials argued about how powerful the job should be. Sources said Zalmay Khalilzad, who is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and is close to Karzai, detected reservations among Afghan senior officials -- but those reservations appeared to dissipate after the Afghan president met with Ashdown in Kuwait in January.

Ban then met with Ashdown in Madrid to seal the deal. But when Karzai returned to Kabul, he received criticism from members of his cabinet, while the media portrayed Ashdown as a potential pro-consul, akin to past British colonial rulers. Karzai, meanwhile, believed that Ashdown had planted newspaper stories in Britain suggesting that Karzai was a weak Pashtun leader atop a Tajik government, a remark Karzai viewed as "fanning ethnic tensions," said a senior U.S. official.

Said T. Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, suggested that there were worries about the powerful role Ashdown had played in the Balkans. "Based on his past experience in the Balkans, the Afghan cabinet and other officials raised some concerns," Jawad said. "President Karzai decided his role wouldn't be constructive."

By the time Karzai met with Ban and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, the Afghan leader had soured on the choice. Ban had gone into the meeting expecting to announce Ashdown's appointment; instead, Ashdown soon issued a statement withdrawing from consideration.

It was not the first time in recent months that Karzai has clashed with his Western patrons. He has battled the United States over opium-reduction strategies, and in December he expelled two senior European officials for holding unauthorized talks with the Taliban.

Some analysts saw the Bush administration's inability to secure Ashdown's appointment as a serious setback. "The rejection of Ashdown by Karzai undermines the ability of the Afghan government to be moving more forcefully in the right direction," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, which has been critical of the reconstruction efforts. "When Karzai said he didn't want it, the U.S. didn't stick to its guns."

Senior administration officials say that there is no major rift and that Karzai, who has a monthly videoconference with Bush, is entitled to veto power over a position that could vastly influence his country.

Seth Jones, an Afghanistan expert with the Rand Corp., said Karzai, who is up for reelection next year, is reluctant to be identified too closely with the United States. "I don't think over the long term it's a significant blow," he said. But the failure to install Ashdown, he added, shows Karzai's sensitivity "to not be seen as being pushed around by the international community."

Rice to Press Mideast Peace Discussions

The Associated Press
Friday, September 28, 2007; 2:19 PM

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the Middle East next week to press Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts amid doubts from some Arab states about the usefulness of an international meeting she plans to host in the fall, the State Department said Wednesday.

Rice will make stops in Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sept. 19 and 20 to urge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas to build on recent positive steps and lay the groundwork for the upcoming meeting that President Bush announced in July, spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Her visit will follow an agreement reached between the two sides this week to set up senior negotiating teams with an eye toward reaching a general outline of a peace deal in time for the conference, which has yet to be scheduled but is expected in November.

"She's going to talk to each side ... about how we can help move that process forward," McCormack said. He would not rule out the possibility that Rice would bring Olmert and Abbas together for a three-way meeting.

The brief trip comes as the United States is trying to build support for the international meeting but has met resistance from traditional Arab allies concerned that it might not produce much.

Egypt and Jordan, which both have peace deals with Israel, along with Saudi Arabia have said they are not interested in attending the session unless it has a chance of achieving concrete results.

McCormack said Rice would be consulting with those three countries, along with other potential participants following her trip next week and that Washington agreed the meeting should not be just a show.

"Nobody wants to see just a photo op, we couldn't agree more," he said.

Bush and Top Aides Visit Iraq Days Ahead of Assessment

By DAVID S. CLOUD

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq, Sept. 3 — President Bush and his top national security advisers made a surprise joint visit to Iraq today for talks with Gen. David H. Petraeus and top Iraqi officials a week before the American commander is scheduled to deliver a long-awaited assessment of the situation in Iraq.

Administration officials said Mr. Bush decided to travel to Iraq along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to meet face-to-face with General Petraeus and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki because it was his last chance to do so before completing a review of his Iraq strategy.

“He has assembled essentially his war cabinet here, and they are all convening with the Iraqi leadership to discuss the way forward,” the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said. “This will be the last big gathering of the president before the president makes a decision on the way forward,” he added, noting that Mr. Bush would l leave here for a trip to Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations.

It was the first time Mr. Bush was in Iraq with his top advisers, and his third trip to the country.

Ms. Rice and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made a joint visit to Baghdad last year, shortly after Mr. Maliki took office.

Mr. Bush held talks today with his commanders and then he and the American delegation met with Iraqi officials including Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani. The group sat across a narrow conference table facing one another.

Mr. Talabani had been delayed getting to the meeting, but when he arrived, Mr. Bush greeted him warmly, according to Mr. Morrell.

“Mr. President. Mr. President. The president of the whole country,” Mr. Bush said to Mr. Talabani, before shaking his hand and sharing a traditional Middle Eastern greeting.

Mr. Bush’s one-day stop at this desert air base in Anbar Province underscored the administration’s intention as part of the strategy review to bolster support for the Sunni Arab region, where former insurgents are increasingly cooperating with American forces.

But the dramatic meeting also had a clear political goal — to shift the focus this week away from Congress, where a series of hearings on reports critical of the progress of the administration strategy are planned, and to buttress White House assertions that its efforts in Iraq are beginning to produce results.

Administration officials rejected the idea that the trip was a publicity stunt ahead of the reports.

“There are some people who might try to derive this trip as a photo opportunity,” the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said. “We wholeheartedly disagree.”

“This is an opportunity for the president to meet with his commander on the ground and his ambassador on the ground while they are in fact all on the ground together,” Ms. Perino said. “It’s also a chance for him to meet with Prime Minister Maliki and other national government leaders. And he will be able to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eye and talk with him about the progress that is starting to happen in Iraq, what we hope to see and the challenges that remain.”

After meeting with top military advisers last week in Washington, Mr. Bush approved an acceleration of a new program to intensify assistance directly to Sunni areas of Iraq, officials have said. Mr. Gates’s trip seemed aimed at least in part in explaining the American concept for stepped-up assistance to officials in Iraq’s government, who have raised strong concerns about the idea of assisting their Sunni rivals, before it is announced publicly.

General Petraeus is widely expected to ask that additional troops sent to Iraq earlier this year be kept in place at least until next spring, a course Mr. Bush appears to support. But a senior Defense Department official said the gathering would be “instrumental” in formulating recommendations to Mr. Bush on possible adjustments to the plan. The move to increase aid to Sunni groups is one example of the adjustments that are coming out of the strategy review, and the move reflects frustration that Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government has not taken advantage of improvements in security to move forward on reconciliation with Sunni rivals.

But the administration has seized on the Sunni tribes’ sudden willingness to cooperate in fighting the homegrown extremist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a promising political development that they hope will convince members of Congress, especially Republicans who have been calling for withdrawals from Iraq, that political progress is happening, albeit from the ground up, not from the top down, as the administration strategy initially envisioned.

While backing Sunni groups is an attempt to circumvent Mr. Maliki, Bush administration officials stress that the goal is not to undermine his government but to broaden its support.

Mr. Maliki has been deeply worried that outreach to Sunni tribes, which has included American support for setting up armed neighborhood watch groups in Anbar and other Sunni areas, amounted to backing his enemies.

But the senior Defense Department official said the American aid to the Sunni tribes comes with “a quid pro quo” — the need to recognize the legitimacy of the Mr. Maliki’s government in Baghdad.

The official added that spending in Anbar province by military commanders would be increased.

Mr. Bush and his cabinet members were also scheduled to meet today with Sunni tribe leaders from Anbar, many of whom until recently opposed the American presence. Mr. Maliki and other top Iraqi officials had scheduled a rare trip into the Sunni heartland for the talks with the American delegation but it was unclear if Mr. Maliki intended to hold talks with the Sunnis during his visit.

Mr. Bush and Gates planned to press the two sides to move forward on reconciliation and to discuss such steps as provincial elections that are aimed at drawing the former Sunni insurgents into a closer relationship with Mr. Maliki, the senior Defense Department official traveling with Mr. Gates said.

“One of the great concerns many have is that it not be a temporary marriage of convenience,” he said, referring to the growing American relationship with Sunni tribes. The goal, he added, was to ensure that “Sunnis in Anbar are drawing closer to the central government.”

Aides said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Gates also wanted to speak face-to-face with General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, as he considers recommendations for adjusting strategy in Iraq.

The high-level visit was conducted with extraordinary security precautions. American officials said the measures, which included withholding disclosure of Mr. Gates’s arrival after Mr. Bush was on the ground, were necessary because of the top officials from Iraq and from the United States who were present. Although Mr. Gates arrived on a C-17 transport plane, Mr. Bush traveled on Air Force One, which could be seen sitting on the air base’s baking tarmac.

There had been intense speculation among the White House press corps that the president would make such a trip either on his way to or back from Australia, and the White House went to great lengths to keep the secret. The president slipped out of a side entrance at the White House on Sunday evening. Instead of taking Marine One, the presidential helicopter, he was driven to Andrews Air Force base with just one car accompanying him, as opposed to the two dozen or so vehicles that ordinarily make up a presidential motorcade.

Mr. Bush typically takes a small, rotating, pool of reporters with him aboard Air Force One. The members of the pool assigned to travel aboard the president’s plane to Sydney were summoned to the White House over the weekend for face-to-face meetings with Mr. Bush’s top press aides.

They were told to show up at Andrews Sunday between 6p.m. and 6:30p.m., not this morning, as had been publicly announced. Reporters were permitted to inform their spouses and just one editor, who could tell no one else, and were asked not to pass the information by cellphone. When they boarded Air Force One inside a hangar, not on the tarmac, as is typical, the shades were drawn and Secret Service agents took their pager devices and cellphones until shortly before the plane landed in Iraq.

The president is expected to spend about six hours on the ground in Iraq before leaving for Australia.

Though Mr. Bush and General Petraeus had met as recently as last week by video hookup, the seemingly last-minute nature of the trip and the array of top officials from both governments who attended did not mean there were deep disagreements among President Bush’s top advisers about strategy in Iraq, they said.

“Nothing beats the opportunity to look Dave Petraeus in the eye and Ambassador Crocker and say, ‘What do you think? What do we need to do?’” said a senior Defense official traveling with Mr. Gates.

Mr. Bush has been touting developments in Anbar recently and wanted to meet with Sunni sheiks who have formed alliances with the United States this year. Some of the tribal leaders he is expected to meet with were likely involved in operations against American forces before switching their allegiances.

“You don’t reconcile with your friends; you reconcile with your enemies,” Mr. Morrell said, explaining the decision to met with the tribal leaders.

The meetings were held at Al Asad air base rather than in Baghdad because Mr. Bush wanted to see first hand the progress in Anbar, he said, although the president is not scheduled to leave the base, a sprawling complex far from the province’s population centers.

The air base, the second largest in Iraq, is a parched, sunny, dusty place. Troops here said temperatures today were about average for this time of year—about 115 degrees.

After his tarmac greeting, Mr. Bush, wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt and slacks, posed for pictures before being taken by motorcade to a building where a marine gave him a short briefing.

Mr. Bush leaned slightly forward, both hands on a makeshift table, and listened to the marine, with a pointer in hand, as he gave an overview.

The marine said there was progress being made with Iraqi security forces in Anbar, handling more urban duties, allowing the Marines to hunt for insurgents, according to a pool report. But he also said that there is a problem with the short home leaves — five months — which he said strains training, not to mention family life.

“Morale? How is morale?” Mr. Bush was overhead asking.

“Very high, sir,” the marine responded.

As Her Star Wanes, Rice Tries to Reshape Legacy

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — On May 25, Stanford University’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, devoted the bulk of its front page to the university’s former provost, who is on leave while she serves out her term as secretary of state. “Condi Eyes Return,” read the headline, “but in What Role?”

Within hours, the letters to the editor started coming in. “Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back,” wrote Don Ornstein, identified by the newspaper as an emeritus professor of mathematics in a letter published May 31.

Online comments on the newspaper’s Web site were even harsher, a veritable stream of vitriol. One of the milder posts came from Jon Wu, who did not give an affiliation: “Please go away, Rice. We don’t want someone who is responsible for the slaughter of an entire nation teaching at our school.”

There was a time when, perhaps more than Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice seemed to have the best shot at becoming the first woman or the first African-American to be president. But that was before she sounded public alarms based on faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, telling CNN, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” It was before a former top Bush administration colleague, David Kay, charged with finding unconventional weapons after the Iraq invasion, referred to Ms. Rice in Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” as “probably the worst national security adviser since the office was created.”

And it was before furious Lebanese hung a huge banner depicting Ms. Rice’s face, with blood dripping from her lips, from a bridge in central Beirut.

Today, Ms. Rice, 52, continues to have far more star appeal than any other of Mr. Bush’s top advisers. Just last month, GQ magazine ranked her the most powerful person in Washington. Forbes has twice ranked her as the world’s most powerful woman, and Time has listed her as one of the world’s most influential people four times.

But a lot of her gloss has diminished under the steady drumbeat of exposés and tell-all books about the unraveling of the Bush administration and specifically about her inability, as national security adviser, to effectively arbitrate the running turf war between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over Iraq policy, a war which she, and President Bush, allowed Mr. Rumsfeld to win.

Now Ms. Rice is working hard to reshape her legacy in her remaining 16 months in office. She is cooperating with a range of authors who have lined up to write books about her: “The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy,” by The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, comes out next week, while “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life,” by The New York Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller is due out in December. “Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power,” by Marcus Mabry, now an editor at The Times, came out in May.

Although both the Kessler and the Bumiller books are expected to be critical of Ms. Rice on many points, State Department officials say that it is unusual for a sitting secretary of state to cooperate with so many biographies. But then again, few of her predecessors had multiple authors jostling to write books about them.

Looking Beyond Iraq

Beyond trying to influence the historical record, Ms. Rice is trying hard to rewrite her legacy to include something more than Iraq. Her colleagues and friends say that she has accepted that Iraq is a stain that she probably cannot remove before she leaves office. So she has thrown herself into shoring up the rest of her legacy, zeroing in in recent months on Arab-Israeli peace, as a possible source of redemption.

In Washington and around the world, many now believe that Ms. Rice, after two and a half years on the job, is a far better secretary of state than she was national security adviser. As President Bush’s top diplomat, she has lowered tensions somewhat between America and its allies, after four years of a go-it-alone diplomacy that had chilled trans-Atlantic relations. Despite criticism from conservatives within the administration, she has allowed her North Korea aide, Christopher R. Hill, enough space to negotiate a truce that led to the North’s shutdown of its main nuclear reactor in July.

She has cobbled together a six-nation diplomatic effort to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions which, although unsuccessful so far, has managed for more than a year to hold together on a series of United Nations sanctions against Iran. And perhaps most important, she has used those sanctions, along with tough rhetoric, to tamp down the national-security hawks in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who have argued for greater consideration of military strikes against Iran.

But none of that has been enough to erase the view that as national security adviser she largely served as a rubber stamp for a series of foreign policy blunders, during a period that critics say will ultimately weigh most heavily on her legacy. “It turned out to be a very disastrous four years in my view,” said Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Mr. Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department while Ms. Rice was national security adviser.

Richard L. Armitage, Mr. Powell’s deputy secretary of state, said he became so frustrated that he once went to the White House and complained privately to Ms. Rice that he felt like he was getting on a “gerbil wheel” every morning “and nothing would be resolved, and we’d get off at night, and the next morning we would get back on and do it all over again.”

But Mr. Armitage said his view of Ms. Rice had since mellowed. “I’ve become more conscious of the fact that the president got the national security adviser he wanted,” he said in an interview this week. “It just wasn’t the national security adviser that I wanted.”

Ms. Rice is rarely, if ever, self-reflective. But in an interview with The New York Times this month, she acknowledged, ever so obliquely, that her first four years working for the Bush administration were not her best.

“I don’t know; if that’s the assessment, you know, I’ll accept people’s assessment,” she said, her demeanor resigned. “The national security adviser is a great job, because you’re very close to the president; you’re working with him, but it’s also a very difficult job because everything is by remote control. You do not own any of the assets.”

She was sitting in the anteroom of her office on the State Department’s seventh floor, in the chair where she usually sits for news media interviews, occasionally falling back on her usual talking points, except this time, those talking points were interspersed with grumbling that she was being asked for personal reflection, something she does not like to do, preferring instead to work through times of personal turmoil on the piano, with Brahms.

In fact, her friends say that she rarely questions whether she is right or wrong, instead choosing to believe in a particular truth with absolute certainty until she doesn’t believe it anymore, at which point she moves on. “Now you’ve got me trying to psycho-analyze myself,” she complained.

She looked around the stately reception room. On the walls were paintings she hung when she arrived of her favorite predecessors as secretary of state: Thomas Jefferson, George C. Marshall, and Dean Acheson.

“I told Steve Hadley once, I frankly prefer being coordinated than coordinating,” she said, referring to the current national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley. National security advisers, she said, end up spending their time thinking: “Let me see if I can get Secretary X to do Y, and Secretary Y to do X, and let’s see if we can get both to do it.” She gave a nod. “I prefer line responsibility,” she said, echoing perhaps the biggest complaint about her time at the National Security Council, that she was more follower than leader.

Act II, New Mission

From her office in Foggy Bottom, Ms. Rice now has more distance — about a mile — from Mr. Bush than she did when she worked at the White House as part of a bureaucracy that exists solely to serve the president. While still beholden to the president, she sits at the top of a permanent bureaucracy with its own, different tradition and sense of mission.

In her tenure at State, there has been a re-emergence of the more pragmatic thinker who once wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that the president of the United States must remember that the American military “is not a civilian police force.”

“It is not a political referee,” she wrote. “And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society.”

These days, her line responsibility has come with some of its own problems. Officials at the Pentagon have complained that Ms. Rice has not coughed up the promised number of diplomats to staff reconstruction teams in Iraqi provinces. Ms. Rice has also come under fire for her abandonment of her onetime passion: the administration’s stated quest for democracy in the Muslim world.

In the Palestinian territories, she engineered a political boycott of the militant Islamist group Hamas after it won legislative elections, which she had pushed for, in 2006. In Pakistan, while continuing to express support for elections, she has scrambled for ways to keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a military dictator who took power in a 1999 coup, in office. And she made little mention of democracy during a visit to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in July, and did not meet with any political dissidents, citing time pressures and a full schedule.

“It just burns me up that poor Ayman Nour is rotting in jail, and what is she doing about that?” said Max Boot, a security analyst who has generally supported President Bush, referring to the Egyptian dissident who ran against President Hosni Mubarak and was subsequently thrown in jail. “Nothing as far as I can tell.”

“Rice was one of the most passionate defenders of democracy, but it’s been overtaken by this State Department agenda of getting along with dictators,” said Mr. Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “War Made New.”

These days, the flood of Condi-versus-Hillary-for-president spoofs on the Internet have died down. Her approval ratings, while still higher than those of the rest of the administration and Mr. Bush himself, have dipped, to about 47 percent in July from 54 percent in April 2005. And few people are talking about “Rice for president” anymore.

Ms. Rice herself steadfastly maintains that she has no interest in being on a presidential ticket, and says her intent is to return to Stanford when her term is over. But a return to Stanford holds its own problems.

“As a scholar, she’ll be fine,” said Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, who succeeded Ms. Rice as provost in 1999. But, he added: “Clearly, there are people who are unhappy about what she’s done as secretary of state. Some would say she should not be allowed back. But that is not a legitimate position.”

She has threatened to write her own memoir, although friends say that it is doubtful that she would produce the sort of finger-pointing manuscript that George J. Tenet and other former administration officials have delivered lately.

Swinging High

This year, she has made four trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories, and is heading back again next month. She has shuttled back and forth between Ramallah, Jerusalem and Amman in search of what she calls a “political horizon” for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She has engineered six meetings this year between the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Her goals now appear to be focused on a face-to-face high-level meeting between Israeli officials and their Saudi counterparts, in what could eventually bring about the type of rapprochement not seen since President Carter brokered the Camp David accord between Sadat and Begin in 1978.

“I think if we could get to a place where there’s a real, reasonable chance of Arab-Israeli reconciliation as well as Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, that would be a huge step forward,” Ms. Rice said. “I think it’s possible.”

But many of her predecessors in the past have thought this possible, only to leave office frustrated.

“Her strategy is to just keep knocking on this door, without a strategy, making it up as she goes along in an effort to put something together,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who was a senior adviser for Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department under the last three presidents. “This determination is now tied to not just the perception of the national interest, but her own personal interest too.”

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who advised the American occupation authority in Baghdad in 2004, said it is possible, though unlikely, that Ms. Rice could change the historical record in her remaining time in office. “If she pulls a rabbit out of her hat on the Israeli-Palestinian question, and some kind of political compromise in Iraq, it could partially salvage her legacy,” Mr. Diamond said. But, he added, “If we keep going on the trajectory that is now evident, I think even her tenure as secretary of state is also going to be, frankly, pretty damned.”

For the record, Ms. Rice said that she was not fixated on her legacy. On the morning of the Times interview, she had just returned to the State Department from a private tour of the National Archives, which she said she had always wanted to see. A morning with the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, she said, gave her a different perspective on legacy.

“People are still trying to resolve those legacies,” she said. “I’m not going to worry about my legacy.”

She said the recent visit to Camp David by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan gave her some solace, as a reminder that American policies have helped spread democracy and moderation in unlikely places. “I watched the president standing in front of an American and Afghan flag, and I thought, the American president can now stand in front of an American and Iraqi flag, an American and Lebanese flag, and American and Palestinian flag,” she said. “I think in six years to have helped to foster those changes, even if they’re incomplete, even if they’re tough, even if there’s still work to be done — just think about those pictures.”

“Those are pretty dramatic changes,” she said.

She said that she is looking forward to getting back into the classroom at Stanford, where she hopes to interact with students, to challenge them, to hear them out and perhaps to teach them a thing or two about what it’s like to be in the driver’s seat when a national-security crisis explodes.

“I would do a simulation with students, where they are given a problem, some hot spot in the world,” she said. “And over a week they’d have to be the national security adviser solving those problems.”

“All of a sudden,” she said, “it doesn’t look so easy.”

Gulf States Buy Arms With Wary Eye on Iran

Hosting U.S. Forces Seen as a Vulnerability

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A12

CAIRO, Aug. 3 -- Arab nations in the Persian Gulf are snapping up new U.S. arms offers partly out of fear that U.S. military installations on their territory would make them targets in any American war with Iran, regional experts said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the prospective weapons sales for Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf nations this week as she toured the Middle East with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The two sought to win support for U.S. peace efforts in the region and reassure Arab allies worried about fallout from U.S. policies toward Iraq and Iran.

Bush administration officials said they expected the arms deals for the Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- to total at least $20 billion.

Saudi Arabia, with Israel and Egypt, is one of the United States' most powerful allies in the region. The United States pulled most of its forces out of the Saudi kingdom by 2003, but the five other Gulf countries host armored brigades, air-refueling sites and other installations of the U.S. Central Command. All told, Gulf bases host an average of 40,000 U.S. troops, with an additional 20,000 American troops afloat offshore.

For the Gulf hosts, "this makes them vulnerable. It's quite clear that if the U.S. is going to have any military strike against Iran, then they are going to use these military bases. . . . I don't think Iran will miss any chance to impose damage on the region," said Ibrahim Saif, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, in a telephone interview from Amman.

Rice said the Gulf arms package would "help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."

The governments themselves were more guarded. Qatar's foreign minister already had announced that his country would not take part in any attack on Iran, and the Emirates' president ruled out use of his country's territory.

"Of course they have to say it, because Iran is a big gorilla, the 800-pound gorilla," in their neighborhood, said Thomas Mattair, a Washington area author on the Middle East and former research director of the Middle East Policy Council. "But genuinely, their preference is that we don't use force."

"They're concerned about Iran's capability to retaliate against them, to inflict damage on them," Mattair said by telephone. "They've been asking us not to do it. Obviously, they've been getting mixed signals from this administration, as everyone else has" regarding preemptive strikes on Iran.

Arab leaders this week gave scant public acknowledgment of the U.S. arms offer. Rice was the central player in an Arab summit at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but photos on many front pages here showed only Arab leaders smiling and holding hands with Arab leaders, with no U.S. official in sight.

Syria, an ally of Iran, called the arms deals "dangerous." In a statement about the arms sales on his official Web site, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "All U.S. efforts are for the creation of differences among our brothers in the region to impose its ideas and hegemony."

Gulf states, with their tiny armies, hope to buy deterrence with the arms packages, Mattair said, but the new deals probably will prompt a matching buildup by Iran, which is already sprinting to lengthen the range of its missiles and hone its nuclear technology.

Ultimately, U.S. arms sales in the Gulf often are a matter of rewarding the prime protector of the Middle East with oil dollars, analysts said. The U.S. military also offers up some of its more coveted product lines to ensure that Gulf allies keep looking to the United States as its primary protector, rather than Russia or China.

"Was selling U.S. arms to Gulf countries in the past ever a deterrent to Iran or anyone else?" asked Khaled al-Shami in an article in the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi. "Or is it an indirect way to spread around oil revenues where U.S. warships embark?"

Rice also announced a 10-year renewal of the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt has received from the United States each year since 1987. Egypt has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid since signing a peace accord with Israel in 1979.

Egyptian human rights activists said the U.S. arms renewal gave Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tacit U.S. sanction to proceed with his crackdown on all forms of opposition here.

Tuesday, as Rice and Arab leaders talked at Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian court refused to release imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour. The court rejected defense contentions that beatings and other harsh treatment in custody had made his diabetes life-threatening.

Nour was the lead challenger to Mubarak in 2005 elections. A court later sentenced him to five years in prison after convicting him of political fraud. Nour's supporters said the case against him was falsified. Rice told reporters Thursday on the flight back to Washington that she had raised Nour's case privately with Mubarak. Her inquiry went unreported in Egyptian newspapers during the trip.

"The United States decided to replace one commodity, democracy . . . after it discovered the dangers of exporting democracy without the necessary complementary package of cultural and social change and public liberty," wrote Hussam Ittani, a columnist for Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper. "What is the replacement? A commodity whose usefulness was proven in the past: gigantic arms deals."

Staff writer Robin Wright and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

Another Tour Ends Without Solid Plans On Mideast Peace

Rice 'Encouraged' by Interest in Meeting

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 3, 2007; A10

SHANNON, Ireland, Aug. 2 -- After years of setbacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out this week to make one more push toward Middle East peace on behalf of an administration that has less than 18 months left in office. She got some polite nibbles, but not yet the big bite needed to ensure that President Bush's call last month for an international meeting of the region's major players will yield substance.

Many Arab governments want a full-blown conference that produces a broad and specific agreement, while the administration has talked instead of a meeting to explore options and ideas. The basic problem is one that has plagued the peace process for years: the wide gap on issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- and the tough negotiations required to resolve them.

After her talks Thursday with the Palestinian leadership on the last leg of her four-day trip, Rice addressed growing concerns among Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world that yet another U.S. effort will not get off the ground or will fizzle once the parties get together. She tried to assure all sides that any meeting would be "substantive and meaningful" and advance a two-state solution resulting in a Palestinian state. Bush "has no desire to call people together for a photo op," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

En route back to Washington, America's top diplomat conceded that "we haven't given much thought to how" the meeting will look and said preliminary diplomacy will require at least two more trips to the region. The tentative plan is to hold the meeting in November, U.S. officials say.

"I didn't issue invitations, but I was really pretty encouraged by the interest in it, by the willingness to discuss it, by the open-mindedness about the states that might attend," she told reporters traveling with her. The presence of countries that have not made peace with Israel -- notably Saudi Arabia, author of an Arab League regional peace proposal -- is vital to the credibility of any conference.

"We're going to try. All you can do is take advantage of an opening, and I think there is an opening," Rice said. People in Israel and elsewhere in the region see Abbas's government as one "which is serious, which is professional, which is focused on delivering security for people on the ground," she said.

Rice said the U.S. goal is to weave together several elements in the peace effort. These include new bilateral talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who are scheduled to meet Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho; special envoy Tony Blair's work to build up the Palestinian capacity to govern; and the wider regional diplomacy with eight U.S. allies in the Arab world -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The latest U.S. effort, often referred to as the "West Bank first" strategy, seeks to exploit the political split between the two main Palestinian factions. The armed Islamic movement Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, seized full control of the Gaza Strip this June, ending a power-sharing arrangement with the rival Fatah faction. Abbas, a Fatah leader, then formed his own government in the West Bank. The United States is seeking to aid Abbas, strengthen his security forces and foster peace talks with Israel that will eventually win popular support and isolate Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel.

But in its current regional approach to peace, the Bush administration is effectively sidelining a policy shift Rice heralded in 2005: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region . . . and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This week, the administration announced its largest arms sale package, worth at least $20 billion, to Saudi Arabia and five Persian Gulf sheikdoms, offering some of the Middle East's most undemocratic governments more muscle and a greater sense of security, to win support for U.S. goals.

On her last stops in Israel and the West Bank, Rice's mission met with skepticism. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in an interview that Bush's July 16 initiative could backfire if the U.S.-orchestrated meeting is "only a verbal, feel-good exercise."

"There's a real sense that it may be too little, too late," she said. "As usual, American presidents leave it to the end of their term to deal with the Palestinian crisis for the legacy of an outgoing president."

The Israeli press cast doubt on whether the traditional Arab players even represent the real powers anymore.

"Iran has all but completed a hostile takeover of the anti-Israel camp, which now consists mainly of Tehran's proxies and allies -- Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda," the Jerusalem Post editorialized Thursday.

Rice Backs Appointed Palestinian Premier and Mideast Democracy

By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 2 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, embracing an appointed Palestinian prime minister here in the West Bank, said Thursday that the United States still supported democracy in the Middle East. But she defended the American refusal to recognize the earlier, elected, Hamas-led government.

Standing next to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, during a news conference here, Ms. Rice said, “We believe strongly in the right of people to express themselves and their desires, in elections.” But, she added, once elected, “ you have the obligation to govern responsibly.”

She said that the United States and other Western nations had been right to boycott Hamas and the elected Palestinian government. “You can’t have one foot in the path of terror and one foot in the path of politics,” she added.

Ms. Rice met with Salam Fayyad, the prime minister selected by Mr. Abbas after he ousted the Hamas-led government.

Mr. Abbas of Fatah has been seeking to consolidate his power since a June coup left the rival Hamas movement in power in the Gaza Strip. He has held out the prospect of new elections soon. He appointed Mr. Fayyad after firing the Hamas-led government of Ismail Haniya.

Hamas won a legislative majority in January 2006, but Fatah never agreed to accept it, and the United States and Israel refused to deal with Hamas, which they classify as a terrorist organization, unless it accepted Israel’s right to exist and agreed to give up violence.

Ms. Rice said it was up to the Palestinians to decide when to hold a new vote, but the Americans, like the Israelis, have told Mr. Abbas they will not accept a renewal of a unity government with Hamas.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that he would not try to reconcile with Hamas unless they “reverse everything they did” and “apologize to the Palestinian people — then we might reconsider.”

It would be nearly impossible for Mr. Abbas to hold an early vote unless Hamas agreed to one. Mr. Abbas told Ms. Rice that he was ready to work with Israel on a “declaration of principles” as an interim step toward a full peace agreement, an idea floated last week by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Such a declaration, as envisioned by Israel, would outline the contours of a future Palestinian state, without immediately tackling the most explosive issues, like final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Mr. Abbas said Thursday that once such a declaration had been negotiated, “what is important is that we arrive at a result and that we know what that result is, what is the roof that we need to reach, but the stages of implementation can be agreed on later.”

Separately on Wednesday and Thursday, Ms. Rice met with Mr. Olmert and other senior Israeli officials to discuss plans for Mr. Bush’s fall conference on Palestinian-Israeli peace.

Her meetings in the West Bank ended a three-day swing through the region that included stops in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where she pressed for Arab support for the conference.

Ms. Rice’s trip was the first high-level American visit to Israel and the West Bank since the Gaza takeover.

Since then, Mr. Abbas — and the world — have largely left Gaza to itself to be governed by Hamas, focusing aid and diplomatic efforts on the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas’s Fatah forces remain in control. The United States, Israel and the European Union have all welcomed the dissolution of the Palestinian government.

Mr. Bush quickly unfroze $86 million in aid, which was put into the deep freeze after Hamas won the 2006 elections. On Thursday, Ms. Rice signed a so-called framework agreement with Mr. Fayyad, which ostensibly released the first $10 million in aid. The money is intended to strengthen Mr. Abbas’s security forces.

A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, criticized the Rice visit and the release of the aid.

“She came to incite one Palestinian side against another,” he said. “She came to provide $80 million to stamp out resistance forces. Rice did not come to the region to establish a Palestinian state, as she and her master Bush claimed, but instead she came to support one Palestinian party against another, and to support the Zionist occupation.”

In a statement, Mr. Olmert praised the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said Wednesday that his country was leaning toward attending the Middle East meeting, but wanted it to be substantive. Mr. Olmert “shares the same approach, that the international meeting will be serious and meaningful, and he welcomes the participation of leaders of Arab countries in the meeting,” his office said.

But Israeli officials also emphasized that, unlike the Saudis, the Israelis believe that the core issues of the conflict should be discussed in a bilateral format with the Palestinians, rather than in an international framework that might make them more difficult to solve.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the most delicate issues should not be addressed immediately.

In Gaza City on Wednesday night, at least one Palestinian was killed when Hamas tried to arrest a member of Islamic Jihad after he fired into the air at a wedding.

Medical officials said that in subsequent clashes between Islamic Jihad and Hamas’s Executive Force, acting as the police, one Executive Force member was killed.

Helene Cooper reported from Ramallah, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

Hill, Aid Groups: One Opaque System Replaced Another

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 22, 2007; A04

Shortly after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took office in 2005, she was surprised to discover that her staff could not answer a simple query: How much does the United States spend each year on promoting democracy overseas?

The numbers were buried in a confusing array of 23 overlapping programs, many with budgets controlled by different officials and agencies. The State Department sent cables to embassies around the world seeking information. Every embassy had its own standards -- one suggested that road-building should count as democracy promotion because roads help people get to the polls -- so months of follow-up questions were required. After nine months, Rice finally got her answer: $1.2 billion.

Rice responded to the disarray by handpicking corporate veteran Randall L. Tobias to manage a sweeping overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance. Tobias abruptly resigned this April after he admitted receiving massages from women linked to an alleged prostitution ring -- but not before he created a new system that aims to reshuffle billions of dollars in aid to better reflect the administration's priorities.

The result is a clearer picture of where U.S. assistance is going, but also a backlash from Congress and aid groups that contend that one opaque system has replaced another, with a small group of people deciding how aid dollars are divvied up, what countries they reach and who controls them.

Rice's foreign aid approach "sadly bears the hallmarks of our failed early assistance efforts in Iraq, where ideology and political connections trumped professionalism," charged Pam Pearson, a foreign service officer who had worked for Tobias, in a cable she sent to top State Department officials last fall.

The fight over U.S. foreign aid has been largely hidden from the public, but it is likely to emerge Tuesday, when the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Henrietta H. Fore, the undersecretary of state for management and the nominee to replace Tobias as the deputy secretary of state for foreign assistance.

The bulk of the $23 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid goes to a handful of key countries, leaving about 120 nations to battle over $3 billion of the pie. India, for example, is one of the big losers in Rice's foreign aid revolution. All U.S. aid to assist India in education, women's rights, democracy and sanitation is terminated under the new system. Overall aid to India -- where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day -- would be cut 35 percent in 2008, to $81 million, on the theory that India has one of the best-performing economies in the world.

One promising U.S.-funded program in India is QUEST, a partnership with tech firms such as Microsoft and Lucent aimed at teaching critical skills in Indian classrooms. With Washington promising about $2 million a year, QUEST expanded from 200 to 2,000 schools in one year. But without a continued U.S. contribution, the initiative probably will not survive, said Aakash Sethi, the program's executive director, in a telephone interview from his office in Bangalore. He said he is mystified by the administration's plan to cut its funding. "This is their baby," he said.

Under a detailed grid that Tobias developed, India is labeled a "transforming" country, in contrast to Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are labeled "developing" countries. As a result, India's slice of aid was cut.

"India is now taking a different place on the global stage, in terms of diplomacy, politics and economy," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "Aid programs had not caught up with these evolving realities."

Assistance to countries such as Nepal, Congo and the Philippines was also cut, while democracy programs were reduced in Eastern Europe and Russia. Meanwhile, huge sums were devoted to administration priorities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iraq's aid was boosted fivefold for 2008, while Afghanistan and Pakistan together will receive more than 85 percent of the $2.2 billion aid budget for 12 countries in South and Central Asia. (House lawmakers later rejected the Iraq aid, however.)

The tensions over the new approach were exacerbated by Rice's choice of Tobias -- whom one lawmaker accused of "tycoonitis" for disregarding Congress -- for a new post overseeing virtually all foreign aid controlled by the State Department. Tobias had previously overhauled U.S. assistance to combat AIDS worldwide, and Rice wanted him to bring the same sensibility to remaking the full aid budget.

Tobias, who declined several requests for an interview, wanted to bring rationality to a system that he thought lacked strategy and accountability, insiders said. Aid work traditionally was assessed by State Department officials using as many as 11,000 standards, or "indicators," and almost everyone interpreted them differently. Tobias and his staff whittled them down to 500.

Under Tobias's plan, foreign aid should meet corporate standards for measuring inputs, outputs and efficiency. According to his grid, every country receiving aid is placed into one of five categories -- such as "transforming countries" or "rebuilding countries"-- and every aid program has to help meet one of five objectives, such as building "peace and security" or "governing justly and democratically." Rice added "reducing widespread poverty" after nongovernmental groups protested.

"It shows how reducing poverty was not front and center in their minds," said Steve Radelet, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Some congressional officials believe that, for all their corporate trappings, Rice and Tobias's changes are little more than a power grab. Long-term development aid often directed by Congress was cut by almost $500 million, or 31 percent, in fiscal year 2008, while "economic support" accounts focused on short-term geopolitical aims and subject to greater administration control were boosted $865 million, or 35 percent. "These shifts are designed to give ambassadors more flexibility," McCormack said.

The House, however, balked at such a shift and returned $365 million to the development assistance accounts in the State Department appropriations bill passed in June.

"They alienated and angered a lot of people," said Tim Reiser, Democratic staff director of the Senate Appropriations panel that handles foreign aid. "The Congress is going to approach this with a healthy degree of skepticism."

State Department officials say the criticism is unfounded. Rice ordered the changes when the 2008 budget process was already two-thirds completed, forcing Tobias and his team to act quickly. Officials say that he and his staff held more than 100 meetings with nongovernmental groups and conducted 30 congressional briefings -- and that few process objections emerged until the budget was unveiled.

"In the old days, foreign assistance monies were controlled by different officials. It was stovepiped," McCormack said. "Some of these complaints you are hearing are from people who had pots of money who have seen their power diminished."

However, many critics say advice from the field has been all but ignored. Rice personally approved the country-by-country budget numbers, meeting weekly with Tobias and keeping a close eye on his work, officials said.

"The new paradigm places a strong premium on centralized, Washington decision-making," added Pearson, who resigned from the foreign service after sending her cable. "It features political control of programs from headquarters, rather than trusting the field's development professionals."

In a May meeting with aid groups, State Department officials acknowledged mistakes in producing the budget, including little communication with experts in the field, according to a memo provided to The Washington Post by InterAction, an umbrella organization for aid groups. The memo quoted State Department officials as saying that Rice will still set strategy but that overseas missions will now have "explicit opportunities" to offer advice. Before resigning, Tobias endured uncomfortable congressional hearings in which lawmakers criticized his changes.

"Your task was to reshape -- carefully, delicately -- and to bring order to our country's tangled thicket of assistance efforts overseas," Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lectured Tobias. "Instead, it appears to many members of this committee, you took to it with a weed whacker, and the results are predictably unfortunate. . . . A process that begged for transparency was instead undertaken behind closed doors under cover of darkness at Foggy Bottom."

Bush Announces Mideast Peace Conference

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:04 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday announced an an international conference this fall to include Israel, the Palestinian authority and some of their Arab neighbors to help restart Mideast peace talks and review progress in building democratic institutions.

He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would preside over the session. Bush said the conference would include representatives from Israel, the Palestinians ''and their neighbors in the region'' and said participants would include just those governments that support creation of a Palestinian state.

Bush also pledged increased U.S. aid to the Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas and called for the convening of a meeting of ''donor'' nations to consider more international aid, including the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

Bush said the past few years had see ''some hopeful, some dispiriting'' changes in the Middle East. And he called the present time ''a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice.''

Bush voiced strong support for Abbas and his moderate Fatah government. Abbas controls just the West Bank after the Islamic militant group Hamas gained authority over Gaza in June.

He said Abbas and his new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, ''are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy.''

Bush contrasted his government with Hamas, which he said ''has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is devoted to extremism and murder.''

Only the Palestinians can decide which of these two paths to follow, Bush said.

He noted that the United States has pledged more than $190 million in direct assistance to the Palestinians, most of it already approved and that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a quasi-governmental unit, was making another $228 million available in loan guarantees.

Administration officials said that Bush would await recommendations from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair before deciding whether asking Congress for more.

Blair was recently named as special envoy to the region by the ''Quartet'' of Mideast peace makers -- the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

That group meets in Portugal on Thursday, at which time Rice and other international negotiators will meet with Blair as he begins his new assignment. Snow said that Bush had discussed his new proposals with Blair.

North Korea 'on track' to scrap nuke weapons

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has expressed cautious optimism that North Korea would stick to a deal to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
"I do believe that the North Koreans will shut down the reactor. They say that they have made a strategic choice to get rid of their nuclear weapons programs,'' she said.

Nine months after the hardline communist state shocked the world with its first atomic test, hopes are rising for the imminent closure of North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, which produces bomb-making raw material.

Ms Rice said "at some point in time, that there's got to be an accounting for whatever was made out of the activity at Yongbyon.''

"I think we're going to know a lot about that in this next phase where they will have to declare what they've done, where they will have to disable the programs and the facilities in a more irreversible way than simply a shutdown.

"But I think we are seeing good signs that they're going to invite the IAEA inspectors in,'' the secretary of state said.

Ten inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were expected in North Korea Saturday after a stopoff in Beijing, the UN agency said.

North Korea has said it will consider shutting the Soviet-era Yongbyon facility as soon as it receives the first shipment of oil promised in a breakthrough deal with the United States and five other powers in February.

The two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan have been negotiating since 2003.

They will meet again in Beijing on July 18 and 19, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

"They're going to shut down Yongbyon and then there will be considerable pressure, I think from the six parties,'' Ms Rice said.

"It's a very good thing that we're in this with the other big regional players - China, Japan, Russia, South Korea.''

Engagement with Iran

From today’s Washington Post:

Secretary of State Condoleezzz Rice offered to join personally in high-level international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program once the Iranians suspend uranium enrichment for the duration of the talks. That offer has - at her request - been conveyed to Tehran by European negotiators with no results, involved diplomats [told Jim Hoagland].