Bush heads to Mideast as peace chances dim

JERUSALEM — President Bush sets off this week to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday, but the festivities are likely to be muted by the dimming prospects for brokering regional peace deals during the Republican administration's waning months in power.

On the eve of Bush's trip, Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters humbled the pro-Western government in Lebanon by seizing large parts of Beirut and unleashing the deadliest clashes since the country's 1975-90 civil war.

An unfolding political-corruption scandal has undermined Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's already questionable ability to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians.

And after a Palestinian rocket killed an elderly Israeli civilian Monday, Israeli leaders warned that a deadly showdown with the militant Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip may be on the horizon.

Combined with the Bush's diminishing influence over world events, the fissures running through the Middle East make any last-minute administration achievements unlikely, said Aaron David Miller, the author of "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace."

"This is not an American story right now," said Miller, who served as a Middle East negotiator for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. "We are not feared in this region. We are not liked in this region. And we are not respected in this region, so there's not much leverage that we have."

The president will visit Saudi leaders who repeatedly have rebuffed the administration's appeals to boost oil production to cut gas prices.

Bush also will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who's battling emboldened Taliban forces and confer with Iraqi leaders central to the administration's final push for stability there.

A planned meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora may be scratched, however. Saniora is trying to contain factional fighting led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah fighters, who are threatening his tenuous hold on power.

"Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran have more influence right now than all of the would-be peacemakers," Miller said.

Initial hopes of having Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sign a statement of progress during the president's visit were shelved when it became clear that the talks hadn't produced enough progress.

As talks with Abbas founder, Israel appears to be edging closer to a more decisive strike on Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli newspapers have reported that military leaders are waiting until after Bush's visit and the country's birthday celebrations to launch a broader attack on Palestinian militants, who are using Gaza as a base to fire crude rockets and mortars at Israeli towns and cities.

The latest rocket salvo killed a 70-year-old Israeli woman Monday, the second time in four days that a civilian has been killed by an aerial attack from Gaza.

"The current situation is not sustainable," said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. "Either there will be an end to this rocket fire into Israel peacefully or the Israeli army will have to act."

Attempts by Egypt to broker a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel so far have produced no breakthroughs.

On Monday, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met in Israel with Olmert and other leaders to present the latest proposal. But Olmert said there could be no agreement without progress toward freeing Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier who was captured in 2006 by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip.

While Israel wrestles with the attacks from Gaza, Lebanon's government has first confronted Hezbollah and then capitulated. Now Middle East leaders are working to prevent the battles from sliding into a long-feared resumption of the country's civil war.

More than 50 people were confirmed dead since fighting erupted Wednesday — first in Beirut, then in the mountains overlooking the city and on Monday in the northern city of Tripoli, where heavy fighting was reported. It is the worst sectarian violence to wrack Lebanon since a 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

On Monday, Beirut remained quiet as more army troops took up positions to keep rival groups apart and supporters of the Hezbollah-led opposition kept their guns out of sight; fighting between Druse factions in the mountains outside the city also subsided.

The unrest exploded out of a 17-month struggle between the pro-U.S. government and the Hezbollah-led opposition over control of the government. The trigger was the Cabinet's order a week ago that an airport security chief with links to Hezbollah be fired and that the Shiite movement's private telecommunications network be dismantled.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.