The Man With The Plan

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For Ross, the Middle East has almost become an obsession. "We have seen too many victims," he said just weeks before the summit. "There has been too much violence; there has been too much pain and too much sorrow. It would not be responsible for us to sit back and not try to seize this moment." That obsession has meant a lot of traveling. He has flown abroad hundreds of times in search of peace. He has driven the region's embassies nuts, preferring to travel light and shunning the press, allowing no reporters to follow him and working without an advance schedule for his movements. A talented college basketball player at UCLA--and still a devoted Bruins fan today--Ross plays Middle East diplomacy like an NBA guard: with a broad game plan in mind but with quick movements, spontaneity and flexibility between quarters. Sometimes flying commercial, he's equally likely to order up Air Force planes on a moment's notice to jet him to Cairo, Damascus or Amman.

For someone so central to the process, Ross could not be more self-effacing. Of the three primary U.S. negotiators of the post-cold war era--the other two are George Mitchell, who helped midwife the Northern Irish peace, and Richard Holbrooke, the brash, Balkan knucklebuster and current U.N. Ambassador--Ross is far and away the most modest. While Holbrooke is known for his deft use of sycophancy and insinuation--key tools of diplomacy when used properly--Ross uses a different method. "Dennis makes up for that lack of flattery and manipulation through trust and discretion," says a former confidant.

Ross earns that trust in different ways. In 1993, when the Palestinians and Israelis on their own had negotiated a draft treaty of mutual recognition as part of the Oslo accords, Secretary of State Christopher sat with Ross, both reading copies of the draft. "There was a lot of tension over what the American reaction would be," says Uri Savir, one of the architects of the accords. "The reaction of Christopher would have an enormous impact on our region...Christopher turned to Ross and asked what he thought. Ross said it was a tremendous historical achievement. That was one of the finest moments of American diplomacy. There was no diplomatic ego involved."

Ross's credibility is due in some part to longevity. In an unusual Washington feat, he traversed Administrations from Republican to Democrat after Clinton's 1992 victory. "Ross just blew everyone away with how brilliant he was," says former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry. As evidence, his former bosses, not usually the most talkative of men, return calls about Ross within minutes. "I don't do this very often," says Warren Christopher, taking time from his duties head-hunting for Al Gore's prospective vice-presidential candidate, "but Dennis is a special favorite. I've never known anyone more deeply committed to the pursuit of peace and willing to make personal sacrifices for it." Ross has critics, of course. The primary ones have been on the Arab side of the negotiating table, who distrust him because he is Jewish and who say that he takes the Israeli side. "Ross represented the ugly American and the Jewish enemy," says a senior P.L.O. official. Even some former Bush Administration officials, nominally fans of Ross, agree. "He has a fundamental emotional commitment to the state of Israel," says one. "Sometimes that gets in the way of objectivity."