Back-Seat Plan Moves to Forefront

In the back seats of the armored Cadillac limousine, Middle East envoy Anthony C. Zinni, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, an assistant secretary of State and a senior White House aide were all squeezed in with Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It was a little crowded,” a senior administration official said of the nearly one-hour ride Monday afternoon over the hills east of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport as Cheney made his way to Jerusalem.

But out of that tight fit came a plan that U.S. officials hope will calm the immediate conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and put the longer-range peace process back on track.

By the time Cheney arrived in Jerusalem for a welcome by Ariel Sharon and, later, a 3 1/2-hour dinner with the hawkish Israeli prime minister, the group had formulated a proposal that would thrust Cheney into the role of Middle East motivator.

Meeting in Egypt

The plan, which may have Cheney meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat early next week in Egypt, could also break an impasse between Arafat and Sharon, whose tanks have kept Arafat confined to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah for three months.

As Cheney returned to Washington on Wednesday after an overnight stay in Turkey, the fledgling U.S. effort illustrated a foreign policy dynamic that demands that the Bush administration focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while seeking support for its effort to restrain Iraq.

The two issues along with the war on terrorism are now three strands of a braid, ensuring that the Middle East will only grow in prominence on the administration’s agenda.

The day-to-day calls in the administration’s Middle East work are being made by Zinni, who will decide when the conditions have been met for a Cheney-Arafat meeting.

The retired Marine Corps general had returned to the region a week ago for the first time since early January, when there was no sign that the violence would abate.

In the Secret Service limousine Monday, Zinni and the others came up with the conditions that he would take the next morning to Arafat in Ramallah while Cheney met a second, and then a third, time with Sharon.

It was to these conditions that Arafat would agree: to make what is being described as a 100% effort to stem the violence, and to finally implement a long-delayed plan for security cooperation with Israel.

Under the plan, drawn up last year by CIA Director George J. Tenet, Palestinian and Israeli security officials would cooperate in quelling the violence and would share intelligence about potential attacks.

Next up: the meeting in Egypt between Arafat and Cheney. It has become central to the complicated, step-by-step process intended to put Tenet’s plan into effect.

U.S. officials want Arab leaders to lean on Arafat to comply with the plan. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who would be the host of the meeting, is considered vital to the effort to pressure Arafat.

The officials recognize that Arafat cannot entirely control militant Islamic groups, which they believe are fully prepared to engage in violence to torpedo any Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Still, the White House expects him to make more of an effort to stem the violence.

“In terms of Arafat’s ability to control all the violence flowing from the Palestinian side against the Israelis, that’s become a source of continuing debate,” a senior Bush administration official said. “What we expect is an all-out effort by the Palestinians to do everything they can to end the violence.”

This allows room for the Bush administration, which for its first 14 months had largely sought to steer clear of the Middle East conflict, to pressure Israel to adhere to the security plan even if some violence continues.

By creating conditions under which Arafat could leave Ramallah for the Cheney meeting early next week, U.S. officials feel that they are making it easier for Sharon to let Arafat go to Beirut on Wednesday and Thursday for an Arab League summit.

Arafat’s attendance at the summit is seen as central to the discussion of a plan advanced by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that would resurrect the “land-for-peace” proposals that have long been part of the Middle East formula.

If Sharon kept Arafat from the meeting, in the administration’s thinking, the summit would focus on the restrictions placed on him rather than on the peace plan.

Saudi Initiative

Under the crown prince’s plan, Saudi Arabia would ease its hostile relations with Israel--the terms “normalization” of diplomatic relations and the more ambiguous “full peace” have both been used by Saudi officials to describe the shift--if the Jewish state gives up the land it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.

Cheney had heard private pleas, and sometimes diplomatically awkward public demands, at virtually every stop in his 11-day trip across the Mideast that he use his influence with Sharon to let Arafat attend the summit. Several times during the trip, he spoke with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice about what steps to take.

Those pleas were just part of the regional puzzle: In addition to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq, there were also Washington’s relations with the countries that Cheney visited after his initial stop in London and the immediate demands of the anti-terrorism campaign.

Each country had its own issue: In Yemen, for example, leaders are concerned that members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network would seek refuge in the country’s largely ungoverned tribal areas.

And Jordan is emblematic of the need to work all the problems of the region simultaneously, in the administration’s evolving view.

Jordan has for several decades depended on economic help from the United States. To its northeast sits Iraq, to its west Israel. About 45% of its population is Palestinian, its king says.

The administration has discovered that to avoid one issue--the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example--endangers the support it seeks across the region to succeed in others, such as Iraq and the anti-terrorism campaign.

Enter Cheney.

He’s the highest-level utility infielder the administration can deploy, based not just on his title but also on his experience. Bush assigns him the messiest or most important jobs. Cheney has moved from energy czar to custodian of the “secure, undisclosed location” that would serve as an ad hoc capital in case of an attack on Washington. Now he carries the Middle East portfolio.

Cheney’s new assignment takes advantage of his experience as defense secretary during the Persian Gulf War 11 years ago, and, in private life, as the chief executive of the Halliburton Co. As head of the energy giant, he had developed ties with nearly every leader he has met during the past week and a half.

So the messages he brings back to Bush likely would carry more weight than would reports from Zinni or even Powell.

And by next week, he may be offering more.

If Arafat meets the conditions for a meeting with the vice president, Cheney could be traveling to Egypt as early as Sunday night.