WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Worried about possible U.S. aid cuts to the Palestinians, some American Jewish groups find themselves in the peculiar position of defending the funding, particularly money that supports Palestinian security forces.

The Congress has threatened to review the roughly $500 million in annual aid to the Palestinians if they seek full membership at the United Nations, a step opposed by Israel and the United States.

Of the $513.4 million in such aid the Obama administration has requested for the year beginning October 1, $113 million would help strengthen Palestinian security forces and improve rule of law in the West Bank.

Such aid is seen as crucial to reducing violence and to promoting security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel that could be jeopardized if the Palestinians go forward at the United Nations.

It is difficult for pro-Israel groups to publicly support maintaining aid to the Palestinians given the Palestinians’ stated determination to flout the wishes of the United States.

However, at least two groups have explicitly done so — The Israel Project, which says it has laid out an argument to members of Congress that U.S. security aid should not be cut; and J Street, which has issued a statement defending the aid.

“We have made the case that the security cooperation, which is largely funded and supported by America, needs to continue if we want to see the progress … in reducing terrorism continue,” The Israel Project’s president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, told Reuters, stressing her group does not lobby.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two U.S. envoys return to the Middle East this week to try to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and avert a Palestinian bid for U.N. membership, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

U.S. Middle East peace envoy David Hale and senior White House official Dennis Ross head back one week after a round of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders appeared to make no headway, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

President Barack Obama’s administration is scrambling to head off a Palestinian plan to seek full United Nations membership during the U.N. General Assembly session that begins on Monday.

U.S. officials fear the Palestinian move could complicate flagging efforts to resume direct peace talks, which broke down last year with the expiration of a 10-month partial Israeli moratorium on Jewish settlement construction on land the Palestinians want for their state.

Israel is lobbying against the Palestinian bid, which it sees as an effort to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state and to extend the conflict into new arenas such as the International Criminal Court.

Speaking to Reuters after news of the U.S. mission broke, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the plan was still to seek full membership for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, lands that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

“We are going to the U.N. and to the Security Council and we will ask for full membership for a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967,” Mohammad Shtayyeh said. “This does not go against any efforts toward serious peace negotiations.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Reuters reporters travelled with George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001 on what began as a feel-good trip to Florida to promote education.

Here are some of their memories of that day, and those that followed, as they watched Bush’s evolution from the leader of a country enjoying peace and prosperity to a wartime president.

Arshad Mohammed:

“Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of a plane crash in New York?”

I called out that question to Bush in the Florida classroom where, unbeknownst to me, he had just learned the second World Trade Center tower had been hit by an airplane.

Those minutes in the Emma E. Booker Elementary school, where Bush silently came to grips with the attack on the United States illustrate the blessings and the frustrations of being in the media pool that travels everywhere with the president.

On the one hand, we witness history in real time — watching White House chief of staff Andrew Card whisper into Bush’s ear as he sat with second graders, and enjoying direct access to the president to lob questions at will.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Reuters reporters traveled with George W. Bush on September 11, 2001 on what began as a feel-good trip to Florida to promote education.

Here are some of their memories of that day, and those that followed, as they watched Bush’s evolution from the leader of a country enjoying peace and prosperity to a wartime president.

Arshad Mohammed:

“Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of a plane crash in New York?”

I called out that question to Bush in the Florida classroom where, unbeknownst to me, he had just learned the second World Trade Center tower had been hit by an airplane.

Those minutes in the Emma E. Booker Elementary school, where Bush silently came to grips with the attack on the United States illustrate the blessings and the frustrations of being in the media pool that travels everywhere with the president.

On the one hand, we witness history in real time — watching White House chief of staff Andrew Card whisper into Bush’s ear as he sat with second graders, and enjoying direct access to the president to lob questions at will.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it has begun talking to Israel and the Palestinians about how to deal with the aftermath of a Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership despite U.S. and Israeli opposition.

While disclosing the contingency planning, a State Department spokeswoman said Washington did not regard such a Palestinian push as a foregone conclusion, even though a Palestinian spokesman reiterated such plans on Thursday.

Two senior U.S. envoys, David Hale and Dennis Ross, met Israeli and Palestinian officials in the region this week but appeared to make no progress in dissuading the Palestinians from trying to upgrade their status at the United Nations.

The United States and Israel argue that issues such as Palestinian statehood should be decided by the two sides at the negotiating table rather than at the United Nations.

The Palestinians believe acquiring full U.N. membership now — a virtual impossibility because it requires Security Council approval and the United States has said it will exercise its veto — will improve their bargaining position in any future negotiation.

“The trip was certainly useful in terms of working with both sides to think through how we can continue to try to avoid the situation in New York and, if we can’t avoid it, how we can manage things so that after New York we can still stand a chance to get back to the table,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at her daily briefing.

“Our priority is plan A, which is that we can get them back to the table,” Nuland added. “There is no escaping the fact that it is difficult.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tony Blair is playing a central but largely unheralded role in trying to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and perhaps avert a Palestinian push for full U.N. membership later this month.

As described by Western diplomats, the former prime minister’s effort in part reflects a vacuum left by the United States following the May resignation of former Senator George Mitchell as its special envoy for Middle East peace.

Blair’s specific task is to try to win agreement among the so-called Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — on a statement that might lure both sides back into peace talks after a gap of nearly a year.

If he fails, and if the Palestinians seek full membership during the U.N. General Assembly session that begins on September 19 over Israeli and U.S. objections, the result could be a diplomatic snafu that leaves the two sides even farther apart.

Diplomats and analysts describe Blair’s challenge as Sisyphean and they question whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is genuinely interested in resuming peace negotiations for now.

Blair’s diplomacy to craft a consensus statement appears to be accelerating. In the past week he quietly met Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Paris.

He plans to return to the region this weekend and is expected in the next few days to see Netanyahu again and to sit down with Palestinian officials.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday she resented what she viewed as an attack on her integrity by former Vice President Dick Cheney in his just-published memoir.

Speaking in an interview with Reuters, Rice rejected Cheney’s contention that she misled President George W. Bush about nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

“I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans,” Rice said in her first public comments on the matter. “You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don’t appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies.”

Rice, in a telephone interview, also disputed a passage in Cheney’s memoir, “In My Time,” in which he says the secretary of state “tearfully admitted” that the Bush administration should not have apologized for a claim in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address on Iraq’s supposed search for uranium for nuclear arms.

Cheney, who opposed a public apology for the unfounded claim, wrote that Rice “came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it?” Rice said in the interview. “I would never — I don’t remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him.”

“I did say to him that he had been right about the press reaction” to the administration’s acknowledgment that the remarks about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa should not have been in Bush’s speech, Rice said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday she resented what she viewed as an attack on her integrity by former Vice President Dick Cheney in his just-published memoir.

Speaking in an interview with Reuters, Rice rejected Cheney’s contention that she misled President George W. Bush about nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

“I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans,” Rice said in her first public comments on the matter. “You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don’t appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies.”

Rice, in a telephone interview, also disputed a passage in Cheney’s memoir, “In My Time,” in which he says the secretary of state “tearfully admitted” that the Bush administration should not have apologized for a claim in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address on Iraq’s supposed search for uranium for nuclear arms.

Cheney, who opposed a public apology for the unfounded claim, wrote that Rice “came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it?” Rice said in the interview. “I would never — I don’t remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him.”

“I did say to him that he had been right about the press reaction” to the administration’s acknowledgment that the remarks about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa should not have been in Bush’s speech, Rice said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rich in oil but without a properly functioning state, a post-Gaddafi Libya faces major political and economic challenges as it tries to rebuild after four decades of despotic rule.

A transitional council of Libyan rebels has already tried to roughly outline rebuilding plans, using a Power Point presentation for stabilizing a country while it is in the final throes of a violent transition.

Diplomats who have seen the rough plan say the rebel Transitional National Council knows it must move swiftly to meet expectations of the masses of people who have provided the support and manpower to oust Muammar Gaddafi after 42 years.

Among the TNC’s biggest concerns is that the United States and others will be too slow in unfreezing billions of dollars of Gaddafi’s assets, leading to a complete breakdown of basic services, Western and Middle East diplomats told Reuters.

One option under consideration was for the transitional council to seek temporary bridge financing from the World Bank and other global institutions until political decisions are made to return all of its assets, the officials said.

Even as fierce fighting persists in Tripoli, diplomats and financiers are accelerating plans to help Libyans rebuild once Gaddafi’s regime is ended.

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it was seeking to release between $1 billion (605.7 million pounds) and $1.5 billion of frozen Libyan government assets to the rebels within days if it can secure the blessing of the United Nations sanctions committee.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Thursday will call on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and slap new sanctions on his government in a toughening of the U.S. stance towards the Syrian leader, a U.S. official said.

The White House will shortly issue a “very tough” new executive order from Obama sanctioning Syria, a senior U.S. official said. “We believe that this strong action will lend additional force to the president’s words,” the official said.

Obama’s move will be followed by a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sources say the moves are intended to sharply ratchet up pressure on Syria, where Assad has engaged in a brutal crackdown against protesters seeking an end to the 41-year rule by Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad.

The U.S. sanctions and demand for Assad’s exit are expected to be followed by similar calls from other powers, notably the European Union.

Washington has been edging closer to an explicit call for Assad to go since Syrian protesters began to demonstrate against his rule in March, inspired by revolts that toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year.

The United States held off initially in hopes that Assad might reverse course and embrace democratic reforms, a possibility that U.S. officials appear to have given up on.