Washington, May 29: The US may hold a multilateral summit on the Middle East crisis with Arab leaders if "conditions permit", even as it tried to soothe worries that war of words between Washington and Tehran may turn out to be a prelude to military action against Iran by saying that the situation in that country may require a different approach from that of Iraq. "If President George W Bush's meetings with Arab leaders and meeting with Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli premier Ariel Sharon go well, there could be a multilateral summit including Bush, all Arab leaders, Abbas, Sharon," Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice indicated at a press conference here yesterday. "He (Bush) fully believes that he is now in a position to advance the agenda, or we would not have proposed the plan and the trip. We are watching the circumstances; We are watching to see if the parties are moving forward. But we believe that we are at a place where this meeting is likely to be very helpful. And so the president is simply saying that he will assess, but he fully believes that he is going to be able to go forward," Rice said.

Rice said that on June 2, after the G-8 summit, a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac, Bush will depart for Geneva en route to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, at the invitation of President Hosni Mubarak.
On June 3, Bush will have a bilateral talk with Mubarak. Mubarak will then host a meeting with president Bush, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Hamad of Bahrain, and the Palestinian Prime Minister.

Bureau Report