Bush says he has not lot hope for peace in Mideast

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- President Bush said Sunday he has not lost hope for peace in the Middle East but insisted the world must deal harshly with terrorists to keep them from undoing a peace plan he helped restart just days ago.

Bush said he wants to help the Palestinians rein in terrorists, but he stopped short of pledging money or arms to the Palestinian Authority to aid it in combating terror groups like Hamas.

Pressed on what aid the Bush administration might provide, he said the United States is helping the Palestinian leadership complete a strategy for reconstituting its security forces "in order to make sure the terrorists, the haters of peace, those who can't stand freedom, do not have their way in the Middle East."

The remarks, spoken as he left church, were Bush's first on the Middle East since he arrived in Maine for a long Father's Day weekend with his family. Bush said he saw an apparent break in the surge of violence that followed a peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan, earlier this month. But he acknowledged the gravity of the job.

"I'm confident we can achieve peace," he said. "It's going to be a tough road, but I am determined to continue to lend the weight of this government to advance peace."

Bush, at a June 4 summit in Jordan with Israeli and Palestinians leaders, helped initiate a plan, known as the road map, which specified an immediate end to 32 months of violence simultaneously with moves by Israel to stop building of Jewish settlements in occupied territories. The goal was creation of a Palestinian state, living in peace alongside Israel, by 2005.

Since that meeting, renewed violence -- capped by a bus bombing by Hamas and a string of Israeli helicopter raids with rocket aimed at Hamas leaders -- has killed 63 people, mainly civilians on both sides.The difficulty of ending the violence was apparent earlier Sunday by a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a Gaza town, in which a Palestinian was killed and seven others wounded.

The first contingent of U.S. monitors to supervise implementation of the peace plan arrived in the region Sunday. The team is led by Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf. Secretary of State Colin Powell and representatives of the United Nations, Russia and the European Union, which worked on the peace blueprint, plan talks in Jordan this week.

"The way for us to have two states, side-by-side, is for everybody coming together to deny the killers the opportunity to destroy," Bush said. "And that's what they want to do. There are people in the Middle East who hate the thought of a peaceful Palestinian state. That's what they can't stand.

"It is clear that the free world, those who love freedom and peace must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers. And that's just the way it is in the Middle East."

The United States is trying to bolster the ability of Mahmoud Abbas, the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, to deal with the terrorists, but the recent wave of violence has prompted questions whether he can truly check terrorism. That has led to discussion of whether the United States should send military aid to the Palestinians.

Not yet, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Sunday.

"It's always a possibility," Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." "But having said that, I would just say this is down the trail.

"We have to be very, very careful about the use of American forces," whether they are deployed alone or with other forces, such as peacekeeping operations sponsored by NATO or the United Nations. "But clearly, if force is required ultimately to rout out terrorism, it is possible that there will be an American participation."