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US President George W. Bush
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LONDON - AFTER intense diplomatic manoeuvring, a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference opens today in Annapolis, the otherwise sleepy capital of the state of Maryland.
President George W. Bush's closest advisers are keen to dampen public expectations. Aware that the odds are still against the conclusion of a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, they have billed the event as merely a 'get-together'.
The choice of the venue is low-key: away from the usual American centres of power, but still a mere 50km from Washington.
The agenda for the talks is also deliberately vague. And, until the weekend, the host US was not even sure just how many delegations would take part.
But this does not mean that the US administration is indifferent to the outcome of the talks. For it represents a significant change in American policy.
When President Bush first walked into the White House in early 2001, the US was still reeling from the failure of a previous peace initiative brokered by Mr Bill Clinton during his last days in the presidency - the most comprehensive package ever discussed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Mr Bush, who blamed the Palestinians for the failure, concluded that no further purpose could be served by his direct involvement. As long as the Palestinians did not have a 'responsible leadership', he argued, new talks would merely invite further 'blackmail'.
The landscape of the Middle East is very different now. Trying to extricate itself from Iraq, the US accepts that no long term stability is possible unless the Palestinian question is addressed.
Meanwhile, Israel is led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who broke his country's political mould by coming to power on a pledge to negotiate peace.
And the Palestinians have President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate politician, who is ready to deal.
In fact, Mr Clinton claimed in his subsequently published memoirs that his effort to broker peace would have succeeded had Mr Abbas been in power then.
For the last few months, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has devoted most of her time to preparations for the conference. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have also held many private discussions. And no less than 20 Arab nations - including the otherwise perennially 'rejectionist' Syria - have agreed to attend.
'The Arab League will participate for the first time in a peace conference with an Israeli presence,' the organisation's Secretary-General Amr Moussa boasted over the weekend.
Not quite, since Arab states - including both Saudi Arabia and Syria - already participated in the Madrid peace conference with Israel in 1991.
Nevertheless, the presence in Annapolis of so many delegations does represent a triumph of sorts for US diplomacy.
But, for what purpose? As Daniel Levy - one of the Israeli negotiators at the last abortive US talks - recently pointed out, 'the stunningly boring and frustrating thing about this conflict' is that everyone has known for years 'what the solution looks like'. The devil, as always, is in the detail.
The Israelis are prepared to share sovereignty over Jerusalem, their capital.
But they are not prepared to accept a demand for the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper, for this would effectively terminate Israel's existence as a Jewish state.
Various compromises are on the table. Yet it is hard to see how they can be accepted, given the weakness of the main protagonists.
Mr Olmert is deeply unpopular at home; Mr Abbas has to grapple with a civil war; Hamas, the extremist organisation still officially pledged to the destruction of Israel, is now in control of the Gaza Strip. And Mr Bush is a lame duck leader, no longer in control of the US Congress or even his own party.
Nevertheless, the Americans derive some hope from two developments. The first is the secret diplomacy currently conducted between Israel and the Palestinians; it may still yield some positive results.
Furthermore, US diplomats hope that the moderate Arab world now shares Washington's perception that the Palestinians must be pushed into a deal, in order to prevent the march of the extremists, and counter the growing challenge of Iran to the region.
According to this analysis, the weakness of the delegates in Annapolis could become a source of strength: they may strike a deal just to prevent a worse outcome.
Yet the chances of this happening remain very small indeed; at best, the conference will launch a wider process of discussions, which will drag on for months, and will probably still continue by the time Mr Bush quits the White House.
Philip Zelikow, a former senior State Department official, summed up the US administration's predicament: 'They're playing a bad hand reasonably well.'
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