The White House 'After Party'

"So President Bush pulled aside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert individually for a couple of minutes each, as they arrived at the conference, hoping to impress upon them the value of issuing a statement."

A great moment for Bush's presidency? You would think so, from the White House's telling. From yesterday's briefing:

Question: "You also said that the President helped encourage them to finalize their statement while at the trilateral. I noticed he was wearing his glasses, suggesting to me they didn't have time to get it into large print. Was it that close, I mean, minutes?"

Perino: "Yes, sir, it was. But the President got there and he was informed by Secretary Rice that they were very close, but there were just some issues that still needed to be worked out, and the President helped finish -- helped them resolve those differences. Secretary Rice and her counterparts, the Palestinian and Israeli counterparts, stepped aside, worked on the language and brought it back, and everyone agreed to it. And the President said, why don't I read this at the top of my speech, and they all agreed."

But how exactly were those differences resolved?

Lee of the AP explains: "Representatives from all three sides were dispatched from a larger meeting to finish drafting the statement, officials said. About 25 minutes later, they decided simply to take out the disputed paragraph and make a couple of wording adjustments."

Here's the final version.

The Post's Kessler describes the whole thing this way: "A deadlock over the statement was broken only minutes before the conference started, mainly by the watering down or elimination of phrases that troubled each side. In a sign of the difficulties, talks had dragged on as late as 4 a.m. yesterday and the statement still did not specifically address any of the core issues dividing the two sides or mention previous U.N. resolutions that are supposed to form the basis for future talks."

More About Today's Meeting

Also from yesterday's briefing:

Question: "Presumably the President offered encouragement and inspiration when he met with the two leaders [Monday]. I wonder if he gets down to negotiating [Wednesday], if he starts to look at specific issues when he talks with them?"

Perino: "Well, we'll see. But my instinct is that that's not the intention of these meetings. This is going to be a situation where the Israelis and the Palestinians are going to have to work through these core substantive issues and look carefully at what President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert said today. They both said that they're committed to doing that; that they're not going to leave any issue untouched; and that it's going to be painful and difficult and it's going to be a long road, but that they are committed to doing it. And so the President can help guide them, but he is not going to do the negotiating for them.

Question: "So it's more inspiration tomorrow, then? More encouragement?"