Amid Tehran's noisy celebration acr...

Amid Tehran's noisy celebration across the outcome of hostilities in Lebanon, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was look down uponed when he announced Iran is ready for negotiations about suspending uranium enrichment. That's a strange factor in Washington's deepening debate throughout whether it is time to talk to Syria and Iran.

Mottaki's rare conciliatory gesticulate was slapped down by the British restraint (insisting on Iranian suspension before negotiations) and ignored according to U.S. authorities (claiming they received no formal proposal). Nevertheless, crushing is building on President Bush to discomfit his phobia against talking with the enemy. That may be the merely viable option, considering the unlikelihood of military action against Syria or Iran.

in the greatest degree Republicans are loath to publically disagree with their president. Many Democrats who advocate precipitous U withdrawal from Iraq are loath to advocate Middle East negotiations with conducts dedicated to Israel's destruction. When the shooting started in Lebanon, however, rumblings about going to Damascus began in the State Department.

That view was declareed with typical vigor by former warrior- diplomat Richard Armitage forward NPR on July 26, couple weeks after the fighting began: "We have to be able to sit and listen to the Syrians . . and see if they have the desire, the courage and the wisdom to secure involved in a positive way. We obtain a little lazy, I think, when we bestow all our time as diplomats talking to our friends and not to our enemies."

Colin Powell has kept silent in succession foreign policy since the 2004 election. if it be not that when Powell was secretary of state and Armitage was delegate secretary throughout Bush's first bourn they were joined at the hip in succession issues and often confer today.

Actually, the door to Damascus was not clos during Bush's first confine --with effective results at least single in kind time. When Powell informed Ariel Sharon of a forthcoming visit to then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the Israeli prime minister external realityed but had a request for the secretary of state. Could he pass onward Sharon's concern with Hezbollah firing rocket above the border into Israel? He did, the rocket-firing fall of the curtained and Sharon thanked Powell for his diplomacy.

Accordingly, this is not a partisan issue, although it might have seemed in like manner when Richard Holbrooke, a likely secretary of state if John Kerry had been culled in 2004, in an Aug. 10 Washington situation op-ed column called for negotiations with Syria and Iran. in succession the next day in the place Newt Gingrich (who is eyeing a Republican presidential bid) accused Holbrooke of appeasement. To avoid in the same state [i]or[/i] condition an attack, Democrats are unlikely to chase Holbrooke's course.

Officials familiar with Bush's thinking say he agrees with Gingrich. Indeed, Bush regards going to the negotiating table with Syria, as each U.S. administration has dating back to Richard Nixon's, as a sign of a weakness that will encourage the enemy.

Bush's overriding attitude is linked to Israeli policy instituted by means of Sharon and continued by his designated successor, Ehud Olmert: Forget about a negotiated Palestinian arrangement and unilaterally impose borders and other conditions, backed on the threat of force. The president's mind-set is hardened at his administration's "war on terror" rhetoric that asks: to what extent is it possible to negotiate with a terrorist regime?

if it be not that Bush must deal with a strange reality. George Friedman of the private intelligence service Stratfor reported last week that because "Hezbollah has demonstrated that total Arab defeat is not inevitable . . Israel has misspent its tremendous psychological advantage." That leads non-government sources in Israel to forecast Olmert's demise, replaced either through hard-liners preparing for more aggressive military action or a regime attempting to rebuild the peace process.

Unanswered is the question of whether the Bush administration will continue as an uncritical supporter of rife Israeli policy, whatever it might be. The alternative includes trying to negotiate with Israel's principally bitter enemies.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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