Cheney to push for Mideast cease-fire

? U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney joined forces Monday with his country’s special envoy Anthony Zinni in turning up pressure for an elusive Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.

Cheney carried a request from Arab leaders that he push the Israelis to allow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to attend an Arab summit in Beirut, Lebanon, later this month.

Cheney, on an 11-day swing through the region, was met at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport by Zinni and the two headed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office in Jerusalem.

Earlier, at a brief stopover in Kuwait, Cheney promised to do “everything we can to encourage Arafat and Sharon to enter into a cease-fire so there is no further loss of human life.”

At a news conference with Kuwait’s deputy prime minister, Cheney declined to say whether he might meet with Arafat, even though time had been set aside in his schedule for a meeting with the Palestinian side. U.S. President George W. Bush has refused during his 14 months in office to meet with Arafat.

A Palestinian spokesman, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said no Palestinian leader other than Arafat would meet with the vice president. “And so there will be no meeting with Cheney unless there is an official meeting with President Arafat,” he said.

Cheney said he would look to Zinni for advice on how he could best serve the cause of getting the two warring sides back to the table for peace talks.

Cheney said Zinni was “in the midst of difficult and delicate negotiations.”

Kuwait’s deputy prime minister, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, urged Cheney to appeal to Sharon to allow Arafat to attend the Arab League summit.

“We hope this wish will be taken into consideration,” he told reporters.

Although Sharon recently lifted some travel restrictions on the Palestinian leader, he has yet to say if he will permit Arafat to attend the Arab conclave.

Kuwait was the ninth and final Arab nation the vice president has visited in his weeklong trip to the region.

As had Arab leaders at the earlier stops, Sheik Sabah rebuffed a U.S. bid for a stronger stand against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and said Kuwait would not support military action against its neighbor.

“Not because Iraq is a friend of Kuwait, but because present circumstances are not suitable … and the Iraqi regime will not be harmed but Iraqi people will,” he said.

Echoing other leaders in the region, Sabah said he preferred to increase the pressure on Saddam to permit the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was quoted Monday as saying Iraq will not allow inspectors to return “unless the sites meant for inspection are defined and a timetable that cannot be extended is set to end the work.” He made the remarks in an interview with the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, based in London.

Zinni, a retired Marine general, has been waging an uphill fight to prod the Israelis and Palestinians toward a peace agreement. His job was complicated over the weekend by a suicide attack in Jerusalem and a fatal shooting north of Tel Aviv.

During his trip to the region, Cheney has sought to build support for a wider, post-Afghanistan war on terrorism, including a stronger stance on Iraq. But he encountered near-unanimous opposition everywhere he went to military action against Saddam.

Arab leaders on his trip were more interested in talking about the Israeli-Palestinian violence, the vice president said.

The conflict “is a preoccupation for everybody in this part of the world,” he said at a news conference in Manama, Bahrain.

With Cheney winding up his Arab tour, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah accepted an invitation to visit President Bush.

The invitation was for Bush’s Texas ranch, although U.S. officials said late Sunday that details were still being worked on. No date has been set for the visit, although Cheney said it would be in the “near future.”

The United States views Saudi Arabia as a key player – both in efforts to get Middle East peace talks back on track and on the Iraq issue.

Abdullah is the author of a peace proposal that is gaining momentum across the Arab world and has drawn some interest in Israel.

The plan would offer Israel full diplomatic recognition by all Arab states in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.