Cheney going to Mideast

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney is retracing steps he took as defense secretary in 1990 when he toured the Arab world to rally support for a campaign against Iraq. This time, on another mission for another President Bush, he is likely to find the political landscape more complicated.

Cheney will brief Persian Gulf leaders on the next phase in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But the visit easily could be dominated by an issue with more immediacy to the region: the intensifying spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Since Bush’s "axis of evil" speech in January, administration officials have been much more forceful in their insistence on a regime change in Baghdad. Cheney probably will find little enthusiasm among his Arab hosts for moving the war on terror into their own backyard at this time, especially with the Israeli-Palestinian eruption.

Cheney was leaving Sunday on a 10-day, 12-country tour that includes stops in key Arab states as well as Israel. On his first overseas trip as vice president, Cheney also will visit Britain and Turkey.

Cheney’s assignment, the president declared, includes looking Middle Eastern leaders "in the eye and letting them know that when we say we’re going to fight terror, we mean it."

"I hope he’ll also be in a listening mode," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East analyst who just returned from a visit to the region.

"Nobody there is talking about Osama bin Laden, or Mullah Omar or Afghanistan. They are talking about the Palestinian issue. It’s the No. 1 topic," she said.

Cheney acknowledges that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has added another dimension to his trip. "But I wouldn’t overemphasize that aspect of it," he said late last week.

He said that "the main reason the president wanted me to go was to talk about the continuing war on terror, and our ongoing operations not only in Afghanistan, but in other respects as well."

Cheney knows the territory.

After traveling there in 1990 to help assemble the coalition that drove Iraqi invaders out of Kuwait, Cheney later kept in close touch with leaders there when he was president of Halliburton Co., a provider of oil field services.

While the administration has signaled it supports removal of the current Iraqi regime, it has not indicated how it wants to achieve that goal. Direct military action does not appear imminent.