Humoring Condi

But that's in the past, Bumiller writes: "For Ms. Rice, Annapolis reflects her evolution from passive participant to activist diplomat who has been willing to break with Mr. Cheney and other conservatives skeptical of an American diplomatic role in the Middle East."

Bumiller writes that Rice's supporters say "she is determined to fashion a legacy in the Middle East that extends beyond the war in Iraq."

And how has she persuaded Bush to go along? "Ms. Rice was able to engineer the administration's shift in large part because of her extraordinarily close relationship with the president -- Mr. Bush 'loved Condi,' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the former White House chief of staff -- and her ability to move him at critical moments."

In another excerpt, Bumiller writes: "Condoleezza Rice and President Bush are often described as opposites, but their closest advisers say they are remarkably alike. Both are products of their own elites -- Mr. Bush from the old East Coast establishment, Ms. Rice from Southern black professionals -- who are supremely self-confident on the surface but harbor resentments underneath. Ms. Rice, like Mr. Bush, has been underestimated her entire life, as an African-American, as a woman and often as the youngest person in the room.

"Ms. Rice's unusually tight bond with Mr. Bush has helped her as secretary of state in his second term to prod the president toward diplomacy with Iran and North Korea. But administration officials have long said that her devotion to Mr. Bush made her unwilling to challenge the president when needed during his first term, when she served as a less than confident national security adviser."

The Cheney Factor

Although Rice has changed her views, Bumiller writes that Cheney "today surrounds himself with senior advisers dubious about the Annapolis meeting."

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that one former top Cheney aide said last week that Israeli-Palestinian peace should not be a U.S. government priority.

"'Priorities for the United States right now should be three or four major crises that are reaching the near acute stage,' David Wurmser, formerly the U.S. vice president's senior adviser on Middle East issues, said Tuesday at an Israel Project luncheon in Washington, D.C.

"Wurmser cited nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea, instability in Pakistan and the radicalization of the Venezuelan government. He expressed amazement at seeing 'a secretary of state almost tearing a hole in the atmosphere flying to Israel and the Palestinian territories trying to negotiate a peace treaty.'"

Wall Street Journal reporters Cam Simpson and Jay Solomon have more from Wurmser: "The point is that right now we've invested the Secretary of State's time in something I don't think is central to our interests," Wurmser said. "We need to change the subject into something that we can handle and we can defeat Iran with."

High Stakes, Low Expectations

Tom Raum writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush, who has avoided playing much of a role in the Middle East peace process, is now gambling that the time is right for progress in the troubled region. But the risks are high, and the odds for success seem long. . . .

"Failure to achieve concrete results would have 'devastating consequences in the region and beyond,' a bipartisan group of foreign policy luminaries said. They include former White House national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, former House International Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton and former diplomats Thomas Pickering and Carla Hills.