Inside The White House: Peace Still Eludes The Bush Team

Shaping a coherent Middle East policy is tough enough for any Administration, but it is even harder for the Bush team because of a deepening division between hard-liners and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Days after Powell left for Afghanistan in early January, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld teamed up to try to shut down the mission of Powell's Middle East envoy General Anthony Zinni and cut off ties with Yasser Arafat. In a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, the two hawks argued that after the seizure of an arms-laden boat headed from Iran to the Palestinian Authority, all ties to Arafat should be cut. "[Cheney and Rumsfeld] made a run, but it didn't work," says a senior Administration official. The move worsened the rift between Powell and Cheney and necessitated a closed-door meeting between the national security team and President Bush last Friday. In the end, the Administration split the difference: telephone contacts with Arafat can continue, but Zinni will not return to the region for further talks until Arafat cracks down completely on terrorism and arrests those responsible for the arms delivery. Later that day, Bush blamed Arafat for "enhancing terror." State officials claim they haven't lost any ground, but Cheney and Rumsfeld appear to be slowly dragging Powell away from meaningful engagement in the Middle East.

--By Massimo Calabresi