Urgent Calls for Peace in Mideast Ring Hollow as Prospects Dwindle

WASHINGTON -- Is the Middle East peace process dead, dying or in a coma?

In a public statement from his Texas ranch and in calls to Mideast and world leaders, President Bush used strong language Saturday to reaffirm America's commitment to the process. And he pledged that U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni will stay in the region to try to mediate.

But the words rang hollow to vast numbers at home and abroad. Prospects for ending the bloodshed or getting either side to talk about a cease-fire, much less peace, now seem slim to nonexistent, according to an array of experts and former U.S. officials.

"There is no peace process. There is only a war process," said Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel until last summer.

"It reminds me of [Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco] Franco when he was brain dead but was kept breathing on resuscitation equipment until people figured out the succession," said Augustus R. Norton, a Mideast expert at Boston University and author of several books on the region.

"The Mideast peace process launched in Oslo in 1993 has been brain dead for a long time," Norton said. "But the vital signs in the corpse have been maintained to keep the fiction that there's some possibility of a revival."