President George W. Bush pledged yesterday that the US would remain engaged in a peace process in which it has become involved reluctantly and insisted that the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, has "made progress towards peace" during his Middle East tour. Patrick Smyth, Washington Correspondent, reports.
"I will continue to lead towards a vision of peace," he promised in a speech to the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington.
Mr Bush's comments made clear that the Powell mission is not over though he was short on specifics about the next phase, and he implicitly responded to those critics who are already dismissing the trip as a failure with a reminder about the intractability of a conflict and divisions that are "centuries old".
But there were no new ideas in the demands he made of the parties beyond, perhaps, an injunction to Israel that it "must begin to look beyond occupation", a hint at the need to accelerate the political track if peace talks can be convened.
Mr Bush's demand that "Israel must continue withdrawal" from Palestinian cities certainly reflected a sense here that calls for "immediate" withdrawal, although opening doors in the Arab world only in the end tend to expose the powerlessness of the US.
He again reserved his harshest words for the Palestinians, demanding that the authority "must act on its words of condemnation" of terrorism, and he called on Arab allies, specifically Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to "step up to their responsibility". That meant, the president said, cutting off support and funding to terrorist groups and clearly saying "that a murderer is not a martyr - he or she is just a murderer".
He outlined a solution to the conflict in which two states, Israel and Palestine, lived side by side in peace and security, but that would require "hard choices" for all the leaders of the region. "The time has now come for all to make a choice for peace."
The president also touched on the war in Afghanistan and globally on terrorism, reiterating the US's determination to stay the course and returned to the issue of the "axis of evil" - rogue states seeking access to weapons of mass destruction.
He insisted that "the world must confront them" and pledged thst the US will take "necessary action" to oppose "emerging threats".
"We will uphold our duty to defend freedom . . . We will not allow the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons."
In doing that, he said, the US would use different means and tactics in respect of different circumstances.
Although the administration admits that the time-frame for dealing with Iraq has been put back by the events in Palestine, Mr Bush was clearly determined to remind President Saddam that his fate is still on the US agenda.