Mideast talks skirt U.S.

Deals are cut, leaving Bush administration out of the action

WASHINGTON -- In a week of dramatic developments in the Middle East, the most dramatic development of all might have been the fact that the United States, long considered the region's indispensable player, was missing in action.

As its closest allies cut deals with their adversaries this week over the Bush administration's opposition, Washington was largely reduced to watching.

More painfully for President Bush, friends he has cultivated -- and spent heavily on -- in Lebanon and Iraq asked the United States to remain in the background, underlining how politically toxic an association with the U.S. can be for Arab leaders.

Over the past few days:

* The Lebanese government, which has received $1.3 billion and political support from the Bush administration, compromised with the Hezbollah-led opposition, giving the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group, which Washington considers a terrorist organization, a greater role in running the country.

* Israel ignored U.S. objections and entered indirect peace talks with Syria through Turkey, another longtime U.S. ally.

* The U.S.-backed Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki deployed military forces to Baghdad's Sadr City slum under an agreement that specifically excluded U.S. troops.

State Department officials scoffed at the notion that the United States has been relegated to the sidelines.

Private analysts and some foreign diplomats, however, said that leaders in the Middle East, both friend and foe, are now calculating with an eye to the era after Bush -- who visited Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt this month with little visible effect.

Others said that by refusing to talk to adversaries and using bristling "with-us-or-against-us" rhetoric, Bush has cut his administration out of the game. Under Bush, U.S. diplomats have had few substantive discussions with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah or the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which in 2006 won elections that the White House had pushed for.

"In that sense, we've dealt ourselves out of the picture," said Richard W. Murphy, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Syria and an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.

Three years ago, Lebanon was a symbol of the kind of Arab democracy the Bush administration envisioned. A Western-backed reform movement, spurred by the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, drove out a generation-long Syrian military presence and made electoral gains against Syrian-backed factions such as Hezbollah.

But every year since Hariri's death, America's sway in Lebanon has diminished and Hezbollah's has risen.

An 18-month political stalemate erupted in violence this month, with Hezbollah and its allies taking over much of Beirut but stopping short of laying siege to the government.

The strategy paid off this week, when Arab mediators in Doha, Qatar, negotiated a peace agreement that fulfilled Hezbollah's three main goals: keeping its vast arsenal intact and untouchable, winning veto power over all government decisions, and tweaking election laws to better reflect the growing Shiite population.

The U.S. and European powers could do little but watch.

Similarly, in the talks between Israel and Syria, it was Turkey that stepped into the role of "honest broker" once played by the United States.

Turkey, a large, pro-Western Muslim nation that has good ties to Israel and Syria, gained credibility in the region for refusing to allow U.S. troops to use its territory to invade Iraq in 2003.