Middle East:In the more than seven years since President George Bush took office, Arab states have repeatedly called on the White House to throw itself into Middle East peacemaking.
Now, as Mr Bush at last engages in a high-profile, if modest, peace effort at Annapolis next week, Washington's Arab allies have been left in a bind.
Many fear that the Maryland conference is too little too late and that the US is driven, above all, by the need to improve a presidential image badly tarnished by the Iraq war.
Some of the Arabs' main conditions for a successful conference have not been met. Arab officials say they want to see a moratorium on Jewish settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territory and the removal of roadblocks as a clear sign that Israel is serious about negotiations. But Israel, at least so far, has shown little inclination to do this.
Washington, moreover, has not insisted on a statement at Annapolis that sets a clear timetable and an endgame for peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians - and Arab governments do not expect it to exert pressure on Israel to do more during a US election year.
Yet, having so feverishly argued for US engagement, leading Arab states are loath to appear unsupportive.
"We have been screaming to the West: please solve the Palestinian problem. If you have a chance to start talking in order to solve it, would you walk away? That would be inconsistent," says a senior Arab official.
A decision on attendance will be discussed at an emergency Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo today, where Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, will brief officials.
For Egypt and Jordan, the risk of engagement in Annapolis is limited. Both have peace agreements with Israel and are in regular contact with Israeli officials.
Saudi Arabia, however, is different: having withheld diplomatic contact with Israel, Riyadh wants to ensure that public diplomacy - namely a handshake between Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, and Tzipi Livni, his Israeli counterpart - is met with substantive Israeli concessions.
The presence of the Saudis has been a key objective for both Israel and the US, which argue that it would boost Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and allow him to better face internal opposition to a final peace settlement.
Saudi Arabia, however, fears early moves towards public diplomacy weaken an already feeble Arab hand, and leave it exposed to domestic criticism.
The Arab League this year renewed its 2002 Saudi-backed peace initiative, offering Israel normal ties with all Arab states if it withdraws from all land occupied in 1967 and agrees to a just solution for Palestinian refugees. Israel has praised the Saudis for leading the offer but has not accepted it.
The Saudi foreign minister has also been urging the Palestinians to take steps towards national reconciliation ahead of Annapolis, reversing the divisions that have left the Gaza Strip in the hands of the Islamist Hamas, and the West Bank under the control of Mr Abbas's secular Fatah group.
There is, however, no sign of reconciliation and Washington's diplomacy is discouraging it. The Annapolis conference is aimed at strengthening Mr Abbas and further isolating Hamas, with whom the US and other western governments refuse to deal.
Saudi Arabia will also be looking at the position of Syria.
Despite a virtual freeze in relations between the two countries, Riyadh, like Damascus, wants next week's conference also to address a return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
As a supporter of Hamas and ally of Iran, Syria is also considered a spoiler whose exclusion can complicate the post-Annapolis Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Although US officials have made clear Annapolis is about Palestine, they have sought to draw the Syrians in by telling them they can raise any issue they want when they address the conference.
Despite all the Arab misgivings, however, analysts in the region say the Saudis and even the Syrians may have little choice but to participate in some form. "It will also take a new American administration maybe two years before getting seriously involved in the peace process - so that's a reason to get something started now," says a Saudi analyst close to the government.
Time is not on the Arabs' side. A two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has already become enormously difficult, given Israel's policies on the ground. A recent UN map shows that the impact of Jewish settlements, roads for settlers, fences and military zones set up in the West Bank renders 40 per cent of the territory off-limits to Palestinians and leaves the rest split into enclaves.
- (Financial Times)