WASHINGTON - The United States is clambering aboard the Middle East peace train six years too late with time running out for President George W. Bush to shape a historic legacy, regional experts say.
But even if earlier US engagement would have been far preferable, it is better late than never, analysts said ahead of an international peace conference in the Maryland port town of Annapolis next week.
No one expects the conference itself to generate any major breakthroughs between Israel and the Palestinians, with even the Bush administration downplaying expectations in recent weeks.
Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group said there were divisions on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, and the Bush administration was "being distracted by crises in Iraq, in Iran and in Pakistan."
Analysts said one actor looms large over the talks, given the shared goal of the United States, Israel and Sunni Arab powers like Saudi Arabia to prevent Shiite Iran from plunging the Middle East into fresh turmoil.
"The fear of failure is a major motivator for everybody involved," Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel under president Bill Clinton, said at a Brookings Institution briefing. "It's better to jaw-jaw than war-war."
The Palestinian group Hamas, which has seized control of the Gaza Strip, and its Iranian patrons would be the real victors if the latest US peace initiative fails, he said.
Syrian involvement in the Annapolis talks would also be a landmark, following an Israeli raid on a suspected nuclear site in Syria in September, and be a rebuff to Iranian-backed extremism in the region, observers said.
Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and former presidential adviser on Middle East affairs, said there would be potent symbolism if both the Syrians and Saudis send senior officials to Annapolis.
Meaningful Arab involvement would be a sea-change from past peace initiatives, when countries such as Saudi Arabia stayed on the sidelines or were actively hostile.
But in terms of substance at Annapolis, Riedel said that for the Saudis, "in many ways this is exactly what they didn't want: a one-day photo op."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nonetheless "deserves credit," Riedel added. "Process, much belittled, is better than no process. There's no reason not to believe in born again, even in the Department of State."
Bush wants a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state created alongside Israel before he leaves office in January 2009. But critics say he has done next to nothing to bring that goal about, and sided with Israel time and again.
Under his watch, Israel has expanded Jewish settlements on the West Bank, begun work on a security barrier dividing Palestinian areas and pursued a bloody conflict in Lebanon against Hezbollah that angered much of the world.
Rice, while staging a series of what Riedel called "one-night stands" of meetings during visits to the region this year, also stands accused of neglecting the intensive diplomacy required to bridge differences.
Skepticism has only been fueled by the preparations for the Annapolis conference, with the State Department parrying weeks of questioning about a date, agenda and list of invitees for the talks.
"Annapolis has been an exercise in mismanagement," Ghaith al-Omari, a former advisor to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said at the New America Foundation.
"Everyone allowed expectations to go very high. Now we are in the process of lowering expectations," he said.
"We have to have a series of summits. Annapolis should not be a one-off. We have made this mistake before."
In terms of time-frame, Clinton was in a similar position to Bush when he convened the Camp David talks towards the end of his presidency in an ill-fated bid to hammer out a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Indyk, who was the ambassador to Israel at the time, argued that Bush had squandered progress made under Clinton by refusing to stay engaged in Middle East peace after 2001.
"It's a tragedy that now at the end of his administration, he's finally coming around to understanding," he said.
Indyk said that Bush would have to go beyond past declarations of support for a Palestinian state, and get into "final status issues" such as territory swaps, Jerusalem and refugees.
"It's really a question of presidential engagement. Everyone has that question in their minds: how committed is the president?"
jit-col/rlp

11/20/2007 23:49 GMT