John King: Cheney's Iraq agenda

CNN's John King

(CNN) -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is touring the Middle East, consulting with its leaders on how to deal with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

CNN White House Correspondent John King is with the vice president in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar after a brief visit to Bahrain. King spoke Sunday to CNN's Miles O'Brien.

KING: Hello there, Miles. I am on a bus. We just left Qatar Air Base -- that is used extensively by U.S. Air Force personnel, who are actively involved in the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan.

Vice President Cheney just delivered a pep talk to Air Force members and some support forces there, promising them the president would give them all the support they need and also promising that the United States was in this war for as long as it takes.

He mentioned not only the campaign in Afghanistan, but then he said the next phase of the operation ... is confronting regimes with weapons of mass destruction that might marry up with terrorist groups. That's an obvious reference to his effort on this trip to build support for a tougher U.S. posture toward Iraq.

That has been frustrating, at least from a public perspective. Many Arab leaders the vice president has met with are saying they would not support such a U.S. confrontation with Iraq.

But in Bahrain earlier [Sunday], Vice President Cheney said in one case -- the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, whom he met with [Sunday] night -- that he was told about public reports that Saudi Arabia was so opposed, it would not allow the United States to use its bases there. He says that some of those reports are "uninformed."

So we are being told by senior U.S. officials in private that it has been a much more encouraging trip for the vice president than you would get the sense of if you read the papers here and listen to the pronouncements of many of the Arab leaders. But Mr. Cheney is conceding, Miles, that in this region, the Arab leaders are preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It makes it harder -- not impossible but quite difficult -- to discuss issues like Iraq.

The vice president is in Qatar. He visits Kuwait City [Monday] morning, then he moves on to Israel, and he said by the time he gets there, he hopes when he sits down with the president's special envoy, Gen. Anthony Zinni, he hopes by then there's a cease-fire in place.

O'BRIEN: I'm curious, John. I know you're not able to be a fly on the wall for these meetings, but as the vice president points to the prima facie evidence that the U.S. is more engaged in the Middle East with Gen. Zinni there, is he getting perhaps a little more traction than he might have otherwise with these Arab leaders as he talks about some sort of action against Iraq?

KING: What we've been told throughout the trip is, if you look at the public perception of the Arab world, they believe the Bush administration has been pro-Israel in its policy. They specifically cite the president's repeated refusal to meet with [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat. They think 10 years of sanctions on the Iraqi government have left Saddam Hussein still in power but punished the Iraqi people.

So there is a great sense of some anti-American sentiment among rank-and-file Arabs. Among the government officials the vice president's meeting with, they say there is more of an understanding of the U.S. position.

But the vice president acknowledged [Sunday] -- he said everyone he has met with wants him to deal first and foremost with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. They don't rule out conversations with Iraq, and there's word that the Saudi crown prince will now come to the United States and meet with President Bush at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.

So this is a consultative process, and everyone tells us no military confrontation is imminent, and perhaps several months down the road the issue of Iraq will be addressed. Difficult diplomacy at every stop of this trip, Miles, so evident that it's complicated that these Arab nations want the Bush administration to apply its leverage on the Sharon government and get a cease-fire declared.