WASHINGTON – President Bush may be about to send his top diplomat to the Mideast, but she doesn't seem to have packed her bags yet.
Bush is meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the upcoming trip, but the White House said there's no itinerary yet.
Rice wants a solution for the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, but said she hopes for a cease-fire of "lasting value."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Rice won't head out "until the conditions are right."
Asked if she might see Syrian President Assad on any trip, Snow said he doubted it. He said previous talks with the Syrian regime have been "blazingly pointless."
Those contacts included a 1990 meeting between Bush's father and Assad's father, then-President Hafez Assad, and a January 2000 attempt by President Clinton to broker a Syrian-Israeli peace accord in West Virginia.
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