President Making A Final Push On Foreign Policy

Bush, World Leaders Anticipating 2009

At a lively dinner meeting before he left Jerusalem, President Bush tried to convince different factions in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet that they should strike an agreement with the Palestinians before Bush leaves the scene. "I'm your best friend; you are not going to get a better deal than with me in office," was how one official familiar with the meeting described the message Bush delivered at Olmert's residence this month.

With one year left in the White House, Bush is trying to turn the normal plight of a lame-duck president to his advantage in an effort to salvage his foreign-policy legacy -- not only seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal but also attempting to stabilize Iraq, isolate Iran and curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"All of these leaders know this president, they understand that he does have a year left in office, and I think they see that as an opportunity for all of them to deal with someone they know," said Edward W. Gillespie, the White House counselor, who accompanied Bush on his recent eight-day swing through the Middle East.

But as that trip underscored, Bush's power to sway world events during his final months in the White House is dwindling, along with his political influence at home. While polite and warm to the president in their private meetings and phone conversations, the world's leaders are making their own calculations: Should they work with Bush, or are they better off waiting him out in favor of an unknown president in 2009?

Those deliberations differ from country to country and hinge on who foreign officials believe might be the next occupant of the Oval Office. Some leaders -- such as Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- appear to have strong political incentives to work with Bush during his final year. Others, in places such as North Korea or Iran, or even in friendly nations interested in progress on global warming, may be playing for time, hopeful that a new U.S. president might be more responsive to their concerns.

"They all are obviously fully aware of the political schedule we have," said John R. Bolton, who served as Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. "Their reaction to that varies, depending on their interests."

At almost every stop during Bush's Middle East trip, the president and his advisers were asked about the U.S. presidential contest. Gillespie, a veteran of many U.S. political campaigns, recalls being asked in Dubai who would win the Michigan primary. The level of interest was "impressive," he said.

Another top aide, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said the Middle East leaders were interested in how Bush thought the next president might handle some issues that rank low among voters at home, such as visas, trade, foreign investment and security in the Persian Gulf. "They want to know what the next president is going to do," this official said, adding that Bush sought to assure them that the United States will remain "open for business."

During his trip, Bush sought to dispel the image in the Arab world that he is a "warmonger," as he put it in an interview with ABC's "Nightline." He was greeted warmly by the leaders with whom he met, and he held roundtables with entrepreneurs and civic leaders and emphasized his religious faith. That message may have been undermined by his repeated tough talk on Iran, though Bush stressed that he wants to solve the disputes with Tehran diplomatically.

Still, Bush and his advisers left the region believing they made some headway in convincing officials that the president will use his final year in office to make progress on key issues such as Iraq and Iran. With a new administration likely to accelerate a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, this might be the last year for the Maliki government to push toward political reconciliation with U.S. protection.

Likewise, Bolton suggested, a new Democratic president might be more open to reconciling with Iran, so the clock is ticking on those leaders who share Bush's more confrontational approach.

Nowhere is the dynamic more apparent, in the view of administration officials, than on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, where the end of the Bush presidency offers a prod for the two sides to come together. Progress in the Middle East has often come in the last year of an administration, some experts note, when there is a real deadline for negotiators.