Washington ? The Bush administration’s policy of refusing to engage with nations and groups linked to terrorism, including Syria, Iran and Palestinian factions, has sharply limited U.S. maneuvering room during the war between Israel and Hezbollah, according to former administration officials and outside experts.

Iran is Hezbollah’s prime sponsor and Syria is the key conduit for the flow of missiles that have rained on Israeli territory – facts that experts say make those countries essential to achieving a lasting solution. But after nearly six years in office, the administration has had increasingly limited contacts with those countries, if such contacts exist at all.

Former officials charge that the administration has missed numerous opportunities to encourage Syria and Iran to cooperate more closely with U.S. interests.

“This has constrained U.S. foreign policy in many damaging ways,” said Flynt Leverett, a White House official during President Bush’s first term who said he argued unsuccessfully for deeper engagement with Syria. “The United States does not have effective diplomatic channels for managing the situation, much less resolving it.”

Leverett’s comments are echoed by a range of former administration officials, including former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who made the last senior-level official visit to Damascus in January 2005, shortly before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was confirmed.

Armitage told National Public Radio as Rice flew to the region last month that the administration needs to have serious dialogue with Syria. “We get a little lazy, I think, when we spend all our time as diplomats talking to our friends and not to our enemies,” he said.

Senior administration officials reject the criticism, saying they have made it clear what they expect from countries such as Syria, which they say has failed to respond appropriately.

“The problem is, talking is not a substitute for strategy, and at the end of the day, countries make choices, and Syria has made, in our view, bad choices – bad for them, bad for us and bad for the Syrian people,” said national security adviser Stephen Hadley.

The administration’s approach is enshrined in the National Security Strategy released earlier this year, which asserts that “the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them.”

Administration officials want countries to change their policies, but in general they have been unwilling to negotiate over the terms of a shift, or even grant legitimacy to the interests of adversaries, believing that would only reward bad behavior. In the Middle East, the administration has taken that approach with Syria, Iran, former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah, as well as with Hamas after it won Palestinian legislative elections.