[AP] Jennifer Loven - President Bush's aides all but ruled out a three-way meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during his upcoming Mideast visit and dampened hopes that the president's high-profile travels would make tangible progress toward peace. "Just his going there is going to advance the prospects," Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said Thursday. "We're not looking for headline announcements." Bush departs Tuesday on an eight-day trip that will take him to at least six Mideast nations and the Palestinian territories. Middle East experts said the trip is an important signal of U.S. involvement in the region, but probably won't produce concrete results. "People are going to be polite. They will be accommodating in some ways. But they are well aware that this is not only an election year, it is an election year from an administration that really has no heir that can really speak for the future or run for the future," said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
2008-01-04 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive