By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush and his administration are stepping up diplomacy efforts in the Middle East and assigning a key role to the CIA.
"We're doing it quietly, without a billboard announcement, every day," Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress yesterday. Earlier in the day, Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and in a 10-minute conversation they discussed "ways to secure peace in the region," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Separately, the White House announced that Bush will meet with Israeli President Moshe Katsav on May 30.
Violence in the region is still the toughest problem, and the Bush administration is pushing both Israel and the Palestinians to end it.
But Powell told the House Appropriations Subcommittee, "It is as tough as I have ever seen it in the region."
Criticized by the Arabs as sitting on the sidelines, the administration not only is trying to curb the violence that has plagued the region since September, but is looking for a way to revive peace talks.
The CIA, whose role was being reduced, now is acting as what administration officials call a "facilitator" between Israel and the Palestinians.
Signaling the new surge of diplomacy, Powell said Wednesday, "We have a number of things working right now, quietly, to get the security situation stabilized, start violence moving down rather than up."
And Powell, in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon after they had met at the State Department, said: "When we have some success there, we can build on that success with improving the economic situation for the people in the region and then ultimately getting back to a negotiating track."
Hariri told reporters yesterday that Powell had assured him the administration did not have a hands-off policy.
In fact, Hariri said, "My impression is they are as committed as much as President Clinton was but they want to use different tactics."
Powell told him he knew there was an impression the Middle East was not a priority for the administration, but he said it was not so, Hariri said.
The pace is likely to pick up Wednesday when Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel visits Washington for talks with Powell and other administration officials.
Long dovish and inclined toward sweeping territorial concessions to the Palestinians, the former prime minister maintains that negotiations are the best formula for ending violence.
The Bush administration, deferring to Sharon, has held there was no point to reopening negotiations that broke down last year until Israelis and Palestinians stop killing each other.
Powell did not insist Wednesday that conflict end before peace talks are reopened.
"We're not going to get back to that track until we get the violence moving down and start to see some progress on de-escalation in violence. Then we can move forward," he said.
Last year, under then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and with Clinton's encouragement, Israel offered Yasser Arafat a state, nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza and control over part of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian leader demanded more - sovereignty over East Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital and the right of millions of Palestinians to relocate to Israel on the grounds they or their ancestors were forced to leave more than a half-century ago when Israel became a state.
The negotiations broke down.
Referring to so-far unsuccessful U.S. efforts to halt the fighting, Powell said, "The United States is fully engaged at every level trying to make that happen. There is no lack of engagement."
"You don't have to look far to see that this administration is engaged. It takes a great deal of President Bush's time," Powell said.
"There is no lack of engagement," he said. "We don't always run out every day with a banner headline, but I can assure you, we are hard at work and deeply engaged."
In the meantime, the CIA, initially relegated to the sidelines by the Bush administration, emerged as a key player.
Israel and the Palestinians have been holding security talks with the participation of a CIA official, agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said.
Describing the CIA's role as a "facilitator," Mansfield said Deputy Director John McLaughlin believes "our role is not to negotiate; it is not to mediate; it is to provide a venue and invite people to come to a meeting hosted by someone who does not have an ax to grind."
Last year, under the Clinton administration, CIA Director George Tenet played a high-profile role in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. But the new governments in Jerusalem and Washington agreed this year to reduce CIA involvement. The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, wanted a larger role for the intelligence agency.
