Hard road for Cheney

ANKARA - United States Vice-President Dick Cheney left the Middle East last night, lacking a mandate for action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but playing a gambit aimed at winning an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire.

Cheney was returning to Washington after a 12-country, 10-day trip to Britain and the Middle East.

The trip sought support for further steps in the US-led war on terrorism and Washington's campaign to deprive Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

But at stop after stop, Cheney met Arab leaders who he acknowledged were preoccupied with the surging Middle East conflict and who said Iraq was a far less pressing priority.

The message he received was that there would be no support for tough action against Iraq while Middle East violence raged.

An early warning came last week from King Abdullah of Jordan, the first Arab leader he met on the trip and a key US ally.

"I have told him [Cheney] that the Middle East cannot support two wars at the same time - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an American intervention against Iraq," Abdullah said.

"To attack Baghdad now would be a disaster. The security and stability of our region would not be able to cope with it."

Cheney said he was not in the region to organise military action on Iraq.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Cheney had told him there would be no strike in "the foreseeable future".

But Washington is committed by law to ousting Saddam, and Cheney has said the issue of Iraq's weapons goals must be addressed.

Several Arab leaders urged the US to become more involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and to urge Israel to let Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attend an Arab summit in Beirut next week.

Cheney responded in Israel with an offer to meet Arafat as early as next week if he reins in the violence and implements a plan brokered by CIA Director George Tenet to enforce a truce.

Such a meeting could help to pave the way for US President George W. Bush to end his boycott on meeting Arafat.

It could also help to ease what Arab leaders complained was an image of favouritism in US Middle East policy.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel would let Arafat travel to the summit, adding that he must deliver a peaceful message.

Cheney's goal of rallying Arab support against Iraq was harder now than in the runup to the 1991 Gulf War.

This time, Washington is portraying the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes as ominous, but it is also more abstract.

The Qatari English-language newspaper the Peninsula said: "What Washington wants the Arab world to endorse is an attempt to overthrow a sovereign nation's legitimate Government in the name of terrorism."

- REUTERS

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