US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell urged Arabs today to help contain Iraq, but met an apparent rebuff from Egypt which said it felt no threat from Baghdad.
Mr Powell offered no comfort on what most Arabs outside the Gulf see as a far more direct menace from Israel.
He arrived in Israel tonight from Egypt for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, continuing a whirlwind Middle East tour - his first overseas trip since he took office.
Mr Powell later met Israel's caretaker Prime Minister Mr Ehud Barak.
He was due to hold separate talks tomorrow with Prime Minister-elect Mr Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat. The meetings may yield the first real clues to US President George W. Bush's policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Arab leaders on Mr Powell's tour, which also includes Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, are likely to urge him to persuade Israel to comply with UN resolutions on withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights as the only path to peace.
In Egypt, Powell focused more on Iraq.
"It's Saddam Hussein who refuses to abandon his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
"He threatens not the United States, he threatens this region, he threatens the Arab people, he threatens the children of Egypt, the children of Saudi Arabia, the children of Kuwait with these weapons," Powell declared.
But uppermost in Arab minds are the Palestinian children killed or wounded by Israeli troops in the last five months of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More than 400 people have died in the unrest, most of them Palestinians.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who has supervised a warming of trade and other ties with Iraq in recent months, said Cairo did not perceive a danger from Baghdad.
"For us, I don't see that threat," Moussa told a joint news conference with Powell. "But if you ask the Gulf region, some countries over there, they would continue to feel that (threat) and they say it publicly," he said.