The Jerusalem Post's take -- The Bush Administration is ping-ponging. Sharon got in the most recent 'ping'.
ANALYSIS: Sharon scoring points with US
By JANINE ZACHARIA
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was beaming yesterday, a day after his meeting with President Geroge W. Bush at the White House. Up on Capitol Hill, Sharon emphasized he has now met with the president six times at the White House.
The score, as Sharon was suggesting, was clear: Sharon-Bush meetings 6; Arafat-Bush 0.
"He seemed more confident and optimistic than anytime I've seen him in recent months," Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-New York) commented after seeing Sharon.
The prime minister "achieved what he wanted," a senior Israeli official said.
Primarily, it seems, Sharon wanted to get the last word in before the president and his aides decide how to proceed regarding Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
"I think it's a brilliant move on his part," said Ned Walker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, of Sharon's decision to come to Washington again. "I may not agree with Arik on everything. But he has done a brilliant job of pursuing his policy."
Indeed, Sharon can say he had the last word with Bush until Friday.
If anything confirms that Sharon had a successful trip, it is that Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal is hustling to Washington to meet the president and counter, what the Saudis perceive, as the dangerous influence Sharon had on Bush. Prince Saud will meet Bush on Friday.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that the Saudi foreign minister's visit will conclude a round of US consultations with Arab and Israeli leaders, and that Bush "in the very near future will make clear his views on how to move forward."
With Arab and Israeli differences in clear focus, whatever plans the State Department had before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's and Sharon's visits will now have to be reconsidered, and most likely scaled back. And any expected policy statement "is not going to have the kind of definitive character to it with regard to a solution, nor is it likely to have a timetable for a type of endgame," predicted Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's special Middle East envoy.
"After these two visits, I think you see Bush's instincts. Whatever else others are suggesting, his instincts came out. He wasn't prepared to sign up to Mubarak's vision of statehood now... and wasn't buying it with a specific timetable," Ross added.
No doubt the Saudi foreign minister's trip, beyond countering Sharon's influence, also has a lot to do with the Egyptian-Saudi regional competition for prominence in the peace process. Mubarak had felt his leading role usurped by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, which is why the White House invited Mubarak this past weekend to Camp David.
Yet one expert on US-Saudi relations says Faisal's trip this week is another example of the US "going out of its way to please the Saudis, to make sure it's Crown Prince Abdullah who receives the credit" for any new Middle East peace initiative.
Regional rivalry aside, however, the Saudis were likely as dismayed as the Israelis were elated by Sharon's meeting with Bush on Monday. Seated beside Sharon in the Oval Office, Bush echoed much of what Sharon holds dear most significantly, that the Palestinian Authority in its current form is not a suitable negotiating partner for a broad peace deal.
Shortly afterward (as has happened frequently in the past), White House spokesman Ari Fleischer hastened to play down the significance of Bush's comments, stressing that reporters should not "over-interpret" the president's remarks, and reminding them that security talks should not precede political talks but instead "go hand-in-hand" a key Arab demand.
"They don't want the Arabs to go crazy," said Ross of Fleischer's follow up. "They don't want to give the impression that they bought Sharon's approach hook, line, and sinker."
Such dissonance makes it a challenge to decipher the direction the administration's policy is headed. Ross, who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says until the administration figures out what it wants to do, it is "a little bit of a ping pong game." "Until the administration is much more definitive in terms of its objectives and policy, everybody does have an incentive to come in and press their view," Ross added.
It may be a while before the administration achieves such clarity.
One US official said yesterday there will be a meeting of the Principals' Committee in the next day or two a convening of the president's senior advisers to consider strategy.
"I don't think one PC is enough," the official said referring to the committee. "It will probably take some time to work out what the strategy will be. Right now, I think any speculation is premature. It can go a lot of different ways at this point."
"A whole bunch of options you are hearing about, more or less all of them are on the table," the official said. "Even no statement could be on the table. Or it could range from plugging away with what we're doing right now.
"It could involve a decision that says we can only go so far in absence of changes on the ground, or it can range up to a declarative statement that is meant to elicit a change in behavior from [Palestinian Authority] Chairman [Yasser] Arafat."
Before Sharon's and Mubarak's visits, the administration was considering a statement that would include a timeframe for negotiations. Now, the question of whether to announce a timetable is especially tricky, since Sharon has made clear he rejects the idea.
And while some at the State Department see a timetable as the only way of getting the sides to adhere to commitments, others, as Walker points out, recall that the Clinton administration "never found a timetable it couldn't miss."
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