THE US/MIDDLE EAST: Although the White House moved yesterday to deny Israel's claims that it had US backing for the removal of Mr Yasser Arafat, the denials did little to clarify President Bush's policy in the Middle East, adrift among disagreements within the administration and a general reluctance to get more deeply involved.
A White House official insisted that the line remained unchanged - that Mr Arafat was a constant source of disappointment but he was after all, the Palestinian leader. But the official added he would call back if that policy changed in the next few hours.
Policy changes have come thick and fast from an administration that - before it was forced to come to grips with the Middle East - liked to characterise itself as a granite embodiment of moral and strategic resolve.
The first of those reversals came with the realisation that the US was an indispensable player in the conflict, and that disengagement (the original Bush policy) was not an option. More recently, the administration has vacillated over whether and when the Israelis should withdraw from the West Bank and whether an international peace conference would do any good.
The policy chaos has reached such a height that last week, when the Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell announced plans for a conference this summer, the White House quickly second-guessed his choice of words. "Conference" was a "misnomer" an official told a US newspaper. With the region in turmoil, and Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon on the way to Washington, the Bush team had not only failed to agree on policy, they could not even agree on the vocabulary.
In its indecision, the administration seems to have resorted to ambiguity. According to a senior official who briefed the press after Tuesday's Bush-Sharon meeting, the two leaders hardly mentioned Mr Arafat, focusing instead on the need for reform in the Palestinian Authority. It is possible that the Israeli Prime Minister, looking to lever as much as possible from the encounter to bolster his own agenda, could have taken this delicate choice of words as a green light. Mr Powell, having been vilified countless times by pro-Israel hawks in the administration, also opted for bland ambivalence. He said he recognised "how difficult it is with some of the parties who are there, some of the leaders and with this kind of violence and with responses that will come and acts of self-defence".
But he added: "We cannot lose sight of the reality that a political solution, ultimately, is what will be required to bring this long-running crisis to an end."