John Bolton, Dennis Hastert, Roundtable

BRIT HUME, GUEST HOST: I'm Brit Hume in for Chris Wallace, and this is "Fox News Sunday".

As military attacks intensify, international pressure increases for a cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Is a diplomatic solution possible? We'll ask America's man at the United Nations, Ambassador John Bolton.

Also, how are conflicts abroad shaping Republican efforts to maintain control of Congress in November? We'll find out in an exclusive interview with the speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert.

Plus, analysis of the week's news from our panel, Paul Gigot, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams, and our Power Player of the Week all right now on "Fox News Sunday".

And good morning again from Fox News in Washington. We begin today with an update on the tense situation in the Middle East. Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel this morning killing at least two people.

Israeli warplanes targeting Hezbollah sites in Lebanon killed several people, and ground troops backed by tanks and armored vehicles began a limited campaign in the south of Lebanon.

This weekend at the White House, this afternoon, President Bush discusses the crisis with the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. And later today Secretary of State Rice heads to the Middle East for a series of meetings with key leaders there.

For more on this story, we turn to correspondent Greg Burke, who is in Lebanon, and our chief Jerusalem correspondent Jennifer Griffin in Israel.

First, Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRIFFIN, FOX NEWS: Brit, we just heard the swish of another Katyusha rocket come here to Kiryat Shmona. You can see the smoke behind me. It's day 12 here, and the rockets are still landing. In fact, one of the rockets just a little while ago wounded three civilians here in Kiryat Shmona, knocking out the power here.

There were similar attacks in Haifa today. Thirteen rockets landed there, killing two people, wounding 15. One of those killed -- an Israeli man driving his car. Another landed on a furniture factory. The rockets hit as the French foreign minister and the British foreign office minister, Kim Howells, were touring Haifa today. You'll remember that Howells was an outspoken critic while visiting Lebanon yesterday of what he called Israel's disproportionate attacks on the Lebanese.

Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its in-and-out incursions into several Lebanese border villages in an effort to draw the Hezbollah guerrillas out of hiding, Brit.

Not long ago, Israel's defense minister, Amir Peretz, reiterated what we have heard from military officials for days now, that Israel has no plans for a massive ground invasion of Lebanon. But he did prepare Israelis for a long fight.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today that Israeli officials believe that they have a green light from the Bush administration to continue these in-and-out incursions for at least another week. U.S. officials have not commented on that.

But also for the first time, we are hearing from defense ministry officials that they would accept an international force in south Lebanon, but they want it to have some teeth -- a NATO-led force, not a U.N. one. Let's go now to my colleague, Greg Burke, in Beirut.

GREG BURKE, FOX NEWS: Good morning. Well, just a short time ago, Israel fired upon a couple -- a PLO base twice up in the Bekaa Valley, so the assault continues really throughout the country.

U.N. relief chief coordinator, Jan Egeland -- he has been visiting the worst areas in the capital, Beirut, the southern suburbs, basically.

The southern suburbs continue to get hit, although the worst attacks have been in the southern part of the country, every day. We heard it overnight. It's just been getting hammered, the really heavily Shiite area in southern suburbs of Beirut really reduced to rubble, in large part.

American evacuations still going out to Cyprus today, the embassy hoping that this is the final really massive evacuation for U.S. citizens trying to get out, trying to get to safety.

And finally, Brit, the Americans we've spoken with -- there's been sort of -- it depends who you talk to. The tourists, the people who were here just by chance to go to a friend's wedding, or one thing or another -- they're thrilled to get out, because they've just had too much of this.

But the others, there are a lot of them who have deep roots to this country and most of them -- they're really leaving with a very heavy heart, a lot of them leaving close friends and, in many cases, close relatives. Brit?

HUME: Greg, thank you.

Jennifer, thank you as well.

For more now on efforts to resolve this conflict, we're joined from our New York studios by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton.

Mr. Ambassador, welcome. Good morning.

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Glad to be here.

HUME: Let me ask you first about what may be a development of some consequence. The Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Meqdad says this morning, quote, "Syria is ready for dialogue with the United States based on respect and mutual interest."

He said a solution to the crisis lies in an immediate cease-fire brokered by international powers followed by diplomacy. Does that move the ball at all, Mr. Ambassador?

BOLTON: It's hard to see. I mean, Syria doesn't need dialogue to know what they need to do. They need to lean on Hezbollah to get them to release the two captured Israeli soldiers and stop the launch of rockets against innocent Israeli civilians.

Syria, along with Iran, is really part of the problem because of their longtime support for Hezbollah and other armed groups inside Lebanon. So I don't know what that adds necessarily, although I suppose it's better than nothing.

HUME: Well, does it provide a -- I mean, is there any reason why this message that you've just delivered on this program shouldn't be delivered to the Syrians by some American representative face to face?

BOLTON: Well, we have an embassy in Damascus. And I think the Syrians have gotten the message -- or they should have gotten the message unmistakably that their continued aid and support of Hezbollah, their refusal to carry out security resolution -- Security Council Resolution 1559 to get all of their intelligence personnel out of Lebanon, allow the new democratic government there to function, to cooperate with the international investigation into the assassination of former prime minister -- Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri -- if the Syrians would do all the things they already know they're supposed to do, that would be a major step forward.

HUME: So, to your knowledge, there's been no direct discussions by any American officials with the Syrian government.

BOLTON: I'm not aware of any. But as I say, we have an embassy in Damascus.

HUME: Right.

BOLTON: They could pick up the phone.

HUME: Let me ask you about Secretary Rice's mission. She's going, I guess, first to Israel and then on to other points over there. What's the purpose? What would constitute success for her mission?

BOLTON: Well, I don't think you can really measure it in those kinds of terms. What she wants to do is speak to important leaders on the ground. There will be a conference in Rome of a Middle East core group including a number of Arab countries on Wednesday.

What we're trying to do here is put together the elements for a sustained solution to the problem, at least between Lebanon and Israel, to strengthen the government of Lebanon, to eliminate the Hezbollah terrorist threat which threatens both innocent civilians of Lebanon as well as Israel, and not to rush into anything precipitously.

The worst result here would be a partial solution that returns us to this kind of problem again in a matter of weeks or months. We've got to think of the longer term here. There may be an opportunity. We need to go about it in a sustained fashion.

HUME: You mentioned that there's an effort here to strengthen the Lebanese government. I suspect that the Lebanese government would probably argue this morning that this bombing campaign, whatever its other effects and purposes, has probably not strengthened that government.

The speaker there of the Lebanese parliament, Nabi Berri, someone we've all known forever, is saying today -- announced that Hezbollah has consented that the Lebanese government would deal with negotiations with a third party and Israel on a prisoner exchange. Does that sound like that could go anywhere?

BOLTON: Well, it's nice that Hezbollah has finally acknowledged who the real government of Lebanon is. Perhaps that's a step forward. What we want to try and do -- and it's difficult in these circumstances to be sure, but what we want to do is come out of this situation strengthening the legitimate government of Lebanon, the democratically elected government, not this state-within-a-state that Hezbollah constitutes.

And I think that's really one of the main areas that Secretary Rice wants to focus on, how to get full implementation of Resolution 1559, how to help the government of Lebanon extend their sovereign control over all of Lebanese territory, including southern Lebanon.

HUME: How concerned are you that this military campaign has damaged Lebanon, damaged its economy, and perhaps inevitably weakened the Lebanese government, which was none too strong to begin with?

BOLTON: Well, two things. First, we have been in constant touch with the government of Israel to urge them to consider the consequences of the military actions. And I think as a responsible democratic government itself, the government of Israel is doing that.

There is a crying need at this point to open humanitarian corridors into Lebanon. The government of Israel very quickly responded affirmatively to the U.N. secretary's request to do that at the end of the week. We're certainly working with Israel and Lebanon and the U.N. to get that to happen as soon as possible, to minimize the adverse effects on the innocent civilians in Lebanon.

HUME: Let me ask you about that U.N. presence. You've had that U.N. garrison, sort of a sad little garrison, up there on the border with Israel now since, I guess, some time back in the '70s. There you can see the watchtower there and the U.N. flag sort of flying in the breeze. It hasn't done very much.

Was it ever contemplated that it would be an enforcer of U.N. Resolution 1559, which, as you've indicated, was to police -- or was a command that foreign forces of all kinds leave Lebanon and also that the Hezbollah attacks on Israel stop?

BOLTON: Well, the U.N. force that's there now really does not have the mandate to do it, and here's an interesting little fact. That force is called the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon. It was sent there on an interim basis in 1978, 28 years ago. So it's been a long interim and I think, sadly, has not been successful.

That's one reason why we need to look at the long-term possibilities of a sustained solution here, not another 28-year-long interim force, but to take the circumstances we find and see if we can't build the foundations for a really lasting peace this time.

HUME: What sort of a force would that be? You heard Jennifer Griffin's report indicating that the Israeli government is looking for something like NATO, which does have some history to be able to fight, to come in there. Is that something you'd advocate at the U.N.?

BOLTON: Well, we're certainly prepared to look at a range of options. I think the first thing you have to do is get the -- outline the shape of what the political solution would be, and that includes most particularly the disarming of Hezbollah.

If it wants to be a political party, it needs to act like a political party and not have in its arsenal things like antiship cruise missiles. Most political parties don't have that kind of weaponry.

But we need to find out exactly how to put together a stable long-term solution. Then we can begin to look at what the configuration of a force will be.

What we really want to do is further carry out Resolution 1559 to strengthen the institutions of the government of Lebanon, to assist, in this case, the Lebanese armed forces to be able to assert their authority over all of Lebanese territory.

And I think you don't want a multilateral force that usurps that role. You want a multilateral presence, an international presence that strengthens the Lebanese government's ability to control all of its territory.

HUME: How satisfied are you that this Israeli attack and the way that it's going forward, with only apparently a limited ground campaign and heavy bombardment, will succeed in its objective of severely weakening, if not crippling, Hezbollah militarily?

BOLTON: You know, I don't think I'm in a position to second- guess that. I think the issue for us in the political and diplomatic field now is to try to take this forward in a way that we don't find ourselves in a matter of weeks or months with this situation repeated.

Israel has lived under the threat of terrorist attack by Hezbollah for a long, long time. And I think the latest provocations, the unwarranted kidnaping of two Israeli soldiers, the indiscriminate raining of rockets down on Israeli civilian towns and settlements in northern Israel, has finally led Israel to the conclusion that it's time to deal with the problem effectively.

And from a political point of view, we want to carry that forward to get a foundation for a sustained solution.

HUME: Iran is now saying once again that its response to the package of incentives and disincentives that's been offered on its nuclear program will be answered on August 22nd. That's a date that they've been talking about for a long time, which this government has previously suggested was too little, too late, or at least too late.

It appears that the Hezbollah attack may, at least in terms of the news coverage and so on, have distracted attention from Iran. Would it not be fair to say that this is working out rather well for Iran at the moment?

BOLTON: Well, Iran has been very good over the past three years or four years in throwing sand in the eyes of people trying to deal with their long-term pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

Right now in the Security Council, we're trying to carry out the decision of the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the council to impose on Iran a mandatory requirement that they suspend their uranium enrichment activities.

HUME: Consequences would be what if they didn't?

BOLTON: And if they fail to do that, then the council, pursuant to the agreement that the foreign ministers have already reached, will begin to impose sanctions on Iran...

HUME: What sort?

BOLTON: ... and further isolate them internationally.

HUME: What kind of sanctions?

BOLTON: We're looking now at targeted sanctions that would go after financial transactions, the Iranian weapons program and others.

But you know, the sanctions won't only take place through the Security Council. There are various kinds of financial measures that we can and have been applying more robustly to pressure the Iranian government to give up this nuclear weapons program.

HUME: One other thing, Mr. Ambassador. George Voinovich, the Republican senator from Ohio, had been a strong opponent of your nomination, has now turned around and said that having had a lot of commerce with you since you've been in the job, that he thinks you're doing well at it, and he's prepared to vote for you the nomination -- your resubmitted nomination will be heard by the Senate, I guess, this week, or at least the Foreign Relations Committee.

Apart from Voinovich, I know Senator Biden, who was a critic, remains one. Do you have a sense that there are others who are now prepared to change their tune and allow your nomination to come for a vote?

BOLTON: Well, I think Senator Voinovich's announcement was -- obviously, I much appreciated it, and I think it represents a fairly dramatic change in the political dynamic in the Senate.

All of the Republicans, I think, are now supportive, and I think a number of Democrats will be as well. So we'll do this one step at a time, have a hearing this coming Thursday and see what happens after that.

HUME: So as far as you know, you can't identify any other switches on the question of whether it should come to a vote.

BOLTON: I think the main thing is allowing the nomination to come to a vote on the floor of the Senate, and then people can vote how they wish.

The problem last year, of course, was we couldn't get a vote at all. I'm hoping we can avoid that this time and let there be a vote on the floor.

HUME: Ambassador John Bolton, it was very kind of you to come in this morning. Thank you, sir.

BOLTON: Thank you.

HUME: Coming up next, the speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: Joining us now to discuss a wide range of issues, the speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert.

Mr. Speaker, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday".

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Great.

HUME: You've got a mission. Your Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra is going to the Middle East this weekend. What's the purpose of that mission? What do you hope to accomplish by that?

HASTERT: Well, I talked to Pete this morning, and you know, they're up on the border. They're looking at what's happening there. In our discussion, he says that he thinks that there's probably three or four things that the Israelis are trying to do.

They're trying to, first of all, cripple the Hezbollah so that they can't send their rockets into Israel, try to push them back to a degree and out of a range of where they could attack, try to make sure that they're not re-supplied, and then try to make some type of a situation where there's an international force along that border to stop them from doing that.

HUME: What's his assessment of how well that mission is going?

HASTERT: I think it's going pretty well, you know, just from what they could see. He said they were up on the border. There were rockets going overhead, and Israelis were pounding artillery into southern Lebanon.

HUME: I want to ask you about something you said on Fox News Channel on Friday discussing the latest Hezbollah violence. And you answered a question by saying about Hezbollah that it is a political party and that, quote -- and you, quote, "would always opt for the area of diplomacy". What did you mean by that?

HASTERT: I said we should always opt for -- I meant we should always opt for the area of diplomacy. They are a party. They want to be a party. Right now they're a terrorist organization. And I think everything is about terrorism as far as they're concerned.

So I think they probably have to be neutralized to come to the table.

HUME: Well, you mean -- so you weren't saying that they should be dealt with diplomatically directly now.

HASTERT: No. That was a misquote.

HUME: A misquote or a misstatement?

HASTERT: Misstatement.

HUME: All right. Let me move on here. On Iran, we're -- the U.S. is currently pursuing some diplomatic avenues. You heard John Bolton say there are some economic sanctions possibly in the offing if that fails.

But the White House leaves open the option of a military response, if it comes to that. Would you intend Congress to authorize that kind of response?

HASTERT: A military response?

HUME: Yes.

HASTERT: I think the last -- I think that's the last step that the administration would want to take. But I think we need to constantly bring as many parties to bear in a diplomatic response. I don't think it ought to be a bilateral diplomatic response.

I think we need to have the Russians and the French and the Germans and Europeans in there, and the whole -- as many diplomatic sources as you can in there to bring them -- I mean, they have a world influence and could have a huge world influence. We need to have the world involved.

HUME: So you'll cross that other bridge when you come to it, is that what you're saying?

HASTERT: Absolutely.

HUME: All right. Let me turn to some domestic issues. Immigration -- you've just been on a trip down to the border and had a look. There's not even a conference between the House and Senate on the respective immigration bills that have been acted on by each chamber. It doesn't appear there will be.

In the meantime, Indiana Republican Mike Pence has come up with an alternative plan which would allow for a guest worker program and possibly even a path to citizenship if people went home first. It's been looked upon in some quarters as a potential compromise and a way out of this impasse. Your view of that.

HASTERT: Well, first of all, I've said we have to secure the borders first. Anything else that you want to do won't work unless you secure the borders. I've said we should have zero tolerance on the border. For 12 years I've been preaching that.

Whether it's carrying drugs across the border or human trade across the border -- you know, we fought a war against slavery, and we've got people bringing, you know, folks in to do basically the same thing.

We need to protect that border. If we can protect the border, I've always said there's a metric. Then you can go to the next step. Pence would do that.

HUME: So you would support the Pence measure?

HASTERT: I'm willing to look at all measures. I'm not saying any...

HUME: Well, would you allow the Pence measure perhaps to come to a vote in the House?

HASTERT: Well, if there's an agreement...

HUME: Agreement?

HASTERT: ... with the Senate, we could probably do something like that.

HUME: Well, I mean, there's some thought that the Senate might even take up the Pence plan before the House does.

HASTERT: Well, look it. If there's a plan to protect the border first, which the Pence bill does...

HUME: Right.

HASTERT: ... and other bills do, too, and then go to a metric, which you can do other things, and a guest worker program, other things -- I don't think we're going to ever get to amnesty. I'm not for that.

But there are some things that you can do to secure labor markets after you secure the border first.

HUME: Well, would you then be prepared to see the Pence plan come to a vote in the House even now?

HASTERT: I'm prepared to bring some agreement if we can secure the border first.

HUME: All right. Give us your assessment of the political prospects for your party in the November elections. If you look at the polls -- people always look to that generic question, which party do you favor.

We were looking at our most recent poll, 42-34, as you see, say would vote -- said they'd vote Democrat. Only 34 percent would vote Republican.

What's your view of -- and you know, there's a lot of talk about a possible Democratic tide. How do you see it?

HASTERT: That's mostly Democrats talking about that. But you know, how I see it -- we're on the offense. I'm going to be in 42 districts in the next -- in the month of August. That's a pretty extensive travel schedule.

We're playing offense. We're playing 12 in districts that Democrats now hold that I think we have a shot of picking up, a couple in Georgia, one in South Carolina, one in West Virginia, one in Vermont, of all places. We have two in Illinois, one in Ohio, one in Iowa, one in northern Washington.

You know, I think we're on offense. And we have, I think -- every one of those districts, every congressional district, is a local race. And if our members are doing a good job, they're taking care of the needs of the people in that district and they have a good message to tell -- we've done a lot when you look at what the congressional record of this Congress has done, and, you know, we need to tell that story.

HUME: The Iraq war looks like a drag. You've got Congressman Gutknecht, Congressman Shays saying that this is going badly.

Gil Gutknecht, who once supported the war, came back from there and said that the conditions in Baghdad are far worse than we'd been led to believe. He wanted troop withdrawals to begin soon. Your reaction to his view.

HASTERT: Well, you know, I've been in Iraq, and I've talked to the new prime minister. I've talked to the new speaker of the house. We are standing up a government there. They're going to be here in Washington this week. We're going to have that dialogue.

You know, thousands of people went to the polls and dared to stick their finger in that purple ink and hold it up and show that they voted, a very, very high percentage. They want a democratic government.

And they are standing up police forces. They are standing up military. As they stand up that military, we'll start to bring our people home.

HUME: How do you think it's going?

HASTERT: I think it's not going as well as I would like to see it go. But as soon as you get the -- between the Shiites and the Sunnis -- that strife settled, I think we can move forward. I think there is a foreign influence there that's disruptive and I think that's getting shut down.

HUME: And how do you think the issue plays in this election? What has to happen for it to...

HASTERT: I think basically nobody wants to be at war. I understand that. But also people don't want us to start something and not finish it. HUME: So your view is that this hurts or helps Republicans in the fall?

HASTERT: Well, you know, I don't think it's a plus for us, but I think the people would -- it would not be a plus for us if we waved a white flag and cut and run.

HUME: I want to ask you about the case of William Jefferson, the Democratic congressman from Louisiana who had his office famously searched.

He appealed. You objected to the search. He appealed to the courts to have the search invalidated and the materials that were seized by the FBI in that raid -- this, of course, occurred after a large sum of cash had been found in the freezer at his house.

You protested along with him and other Democrats on this. The court has now ruled and the matter is on appeal. The court ruled against Jefferson. He's appealing. Are you, on behalf of the House, going to join his appeal?

HASTERT: Look it, the gentleman from Louisiana is in big trouble, as far as I'm concerned. And we're not trying to protect him. Nobody is above the law, whether you're a congressman or no matter where you're from.

But there has to be a procedure for the Justice Department to come in and start just searching any congressman's office. We're saying let's put that procedure in place. We are in cooperation with the Justice Department to get those negotiations in place.

But you know, we're not protecting Jefferson at all. But there is a prerogative that somebody from one administration shouldn't just come in and have a search and seizure anywhere they want to in the Congress.

HUME: Well, they can have a search and seizure of my office. If I were engaged in a criminal enterprise -- if somebody found $80,000 of dubious cash in my freezer, they could...

HASTERT: They should be able to come in and do what they want to on any criminal aspect. But to take all your records, where you have confidential records of people's tax...

HUME: So you think the records should be returned?

HASTERT: No. I think that they ought to be sorted out and the records that they have subpoenaed in the first place, they ought to be privy to.

HUME: So do I take it from what you're saying that you will not have lawyers for the House joining his appeal?

HASTERT: We're not joining in behalf of Jefferson.

HUME: Are you joining at all? HASTERT: Well, we may take a fine line depending on how the negotiations are, that we can at least not have an administration come in and do a wide sweep for anything on any office in the U.S. Congress. There is a constitutional division there that we have to protect.

HUME: Let me just touch one last issue with you, and that's the estate tax or the death tax, as Republicans like to call it. We've passed a measure that would eliminate it for nearly everybody. That's stuck in the Senate.

Where is that issue going? Is there a chance you could get that done?

HASTERT: Well, one of the things that I have really worked on over the last few years is to get the estate tax done. We passed it out of the House I don't know how many times.

I think there's an opportunity to do it in the Senate. We should do it in the Senate. It's something that people who have spent their whole life working to build up a small business or a family farm -- they ought to be able to pass it on to the next generation. I think we'll get it done.

HUME: You do.

HASTERT: Yes, either with -- we're going to do a pension bill next week and we'll either do it in tandem with the pension bill or some kind of combination. There's a possibility.

HUME: Just to pass the House again or to...

HASTERT: No, to get it done. We can pass the House any time.

HUME: Right. All right. So you think it will...

HASTERT: It's my goal.

HUME: You think something will come out -- why do you think something will come out of the Senate that will get you there?

HASTERT: Well, I think, you know, we can have combinations of things that people may vote on. I can't predict what happens in the Senate. That's tough. But we're doing everything we can to make it happen.

HUME: No speaker has ever been able to do that. Well, Mr. Speaker, we're very pleased to have you this morning.

HASTERT: My pleasure.

HUME: Thank you very much for coming in.

Up next, our Sunday panel on diplomatic efforts to end the fighting in the Middle East. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: A cease-fire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo, allowing terrorists to launch attacks at the time and terms of their choosing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That was Secretary of State Rice on Friday talking about the calls to end the fighting in the Middle East.

And it is panel time for Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal, host also of the Journal Editorial Report on the Fox News Channel, plus contributors Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams, also of National Public Radio.

The president and, I suppose, the secretary as well are known to believe that this crisis has within it a real opportunity.

Is it turning out that way, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, I think it's too early to tell, but after some initial State Department waffling where they called on restraint on both sides, I think you're seeing Secretary Rice now saying look, we're going to give Israel the time it needs to take to degrade Hezbollah, and they're working on dividing the Arab world.

They're working on Egypt and Saudi Arabia to try to pressure Syria to stop arming Hezbollah, give Israel -- the most important thing is to give Israel the time it needs to really make progress against Hezbollah, and I think that is the opening, and I think they're now taking it.

HUME: Mara?

MARA LIASSON, NPR: Yes, I think -- well, there's a couple of questions. Number one, will they be able to give Israel the time it says it needs, which is a couple of weeks, to degrade Hezbollah, not to eliminate it, because Hezbollah isn't ever going to fully disarm, and the Israelis say it won't, but to degrade it enough that you can bring in some kind of an international force to patrol that area of southern Lebanon that Hezbollah did control.

And on that, I think the administration is doing two very different things at once. On the one hand, it's breaking with the kind of old style honest broker approach where it tries to be even- handed. There's no pretense of that anymore. It's pretty much giving a green light to Israel.

On the other hand, it is trying to use diplomacy and it's trying to say to Syria you belong -- you would do better, your interests are better served in the Sunni Arab camp and the camp that's pretty much on our side than with the Iranians. And that, I think, is going to be much tougher.

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: And the question is how much damage Israel can do to Hezbollah, and one of the big stories of the last week is Hezbollah is stronger than everyone thought.

They have weapons that Israel and the U.S. was not aware they had -- the silk worm, the C-802 that hit the ship, which does make one wonder, incidentally, if Hezbollah, which is occupying a rather small swath of territory in south Lebanon, has weapons that we were unaware of, what's going on in Iran?

Do we have any confidence that we know what Iran has? If Iran can get stuff into Hezbollah's area in south Lebanon, God knows what North Korea has been giving Iran and what they've been developing on their own.

And the military situation has been tough. If you allow a state within a state, a terrorist group to build up, to have, you know, a safe harbor for six years and allow Iran and Syria to fund them lavishly and to provide advanced weapons, it's a tough military situation there.

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: I think, you know, on the diplomatic front, clearly, Secretary Rice has had success so far at the U.N. in terms of stalling them from doing anything beyond going past 1559, which called for, you know, sovereignty of Lebanon, especially in that southern region, so there's no French initiative. All that energy now seems to have been drained out.

Instead the energy's going to go toward this meeting with the Arab states and trying to get the Arab states to intervene and really act as a limit, a restraint, if you will, on Hezbollah, so that that will be more of an Arab action. I think that's the heart of the U.S. diplomatic effort.

My worry is, as I hear Paul and others talk about, you know, giving Israel sufficient time to degrade Hezbollah, is what do you mean by that? What is victory in this case? It seems to me that you are destroying Lebanon. People are dying, an alarming number of people.

And the resentment that's building in the street, the so-called Arab street, is -- I mean, it seems to me it works against Israel. It works against the U.S. interest. It may even create more anger and terrorism that would hurt us here inside the United States.

So that's why it seems to me like, you know, there's pro- democracy policy. I mean, I was all for it, but at the same time we're destroying a democracy in Lebanon and allowing the Israelis to do it.

GIGOT: Well, I don't think we're destroying a democracy in Lebanon. We're trying to prevent a state within a state from destroying that democracy by taking on Hezbollah, and that's -- letting Israel take on Hezbollah. And I think we have to give them the time to do that.

And if we do that in a way that gives the Lebanese government a chance to stand up, put in some international peacekeepers -- not right away, but a month or two down the road -- that can help the Lebanese government do that, that will advance the democracy policy in a very significant way.

LIASSON: Yes. I think the big question is is the Lebanese government willing or able to do that. It hasn't been up until now. And what exactly -- what kind of international support are you going to provide them?

There's going to be this occupying force in effect, of what? Of NATO? Of other Sunni Arab military organizations? I mean, who's going to go in there, since clearly, the Lebanese government can't do this on their own?

KRISTOL: Or won't.

LIASSON: Or won't, yeah.

KRISTOL: Well, you could have an international force, a NATO- type force. But first, Hezbollah has to be substantially destroyed. You cannot let terrorists control a territory. That's a lesson I think...

HUME: But what you're seeing here is a bombing campaign, largely, limited ground presence -- more perhaps than there was the other day, but still it doesn't appear as if Israel is going to mount a substantial ground invasion.

In your view, Bill, can this job that you're describing be done mostly From the air without enormous collateral damage?

KRISTOL: I don't know. I mean, I've read, you know, the military debates on the web, and there are learned arguments on both sides. I mean, Israel, I think, is keeping its options open.

Whether they might choose to come in with some kind of amphibious operation along the Litani River to try to really pin Hezbollah and do a more substantial ground operation, whether they might feel they have to go up into the Bekaa Valley, at least in the air, and destroy substantial Hezbollah assets, I don't know.

I think it's a very fluid and uncertain situation, and we don't know what Hezbollah has, incidentally. We don't know if they've been holding back some long-range missiles. We don't know if we've really cut down Iranian and Syrian re-supply, I suspect.

So I think this is fluid, and I'm not certain that what has been done so far is enough.

GIGOT: But one of the reasons that I think they're being as cautious as they are is not just domestic opinion in Israel, which doesn't want to repeat what happened in '82, but also because they don't want to do the severe damage that Juan is saying we've already done -- Israel has already done to the Lebanese government.

They want to be discriminating in their attacks, and they don't want to be an occupying force. I think that's intelligent, because that does raise the risks down the road of more Arab opposition and could reunite the Arab world. So I think Israel is taking the right approach.

WILLIAMS: Well, but how can it be the right approach if you're seeing such devastation, Paul? If you're seeing devastation to the point where you have Lebanese, who I don't think were such great supporters of Hezbollah going in and thought that, you know, these people are radicals and -- suddenly, they're put in the position where -- according to U.S. officials, you know, you're putting Lebanese citizens in the position where they may have to rely on Hezbollah now and other militias and radical groups for supplies, because you've weakened the ability of the Lebanese government to supply and care for their own people.

And then you get into a situation where even our allies in Iraq -- you know, al-Maliki -- you know, they're thinking, you know, we're not comfortable with what the U.S. and Israel are doing in Lebanon, and therefore you are again hurting U.S. overall efforts in the Middle East.

GIGOT: The best thing you can do for the Lebanese government is to degrade and disarm Hezbollah because the weaker Hezbollah is as a military force, the more it will have to remain a political party, play a role in Lebanon. And the more you strengthen the Lebanese army and the Lebanese...

WILLIAMS: But this undermines our basic theory that Secretary Rice is taking over to the Middle East this weekend, which is to get the Arab states to act as a buffer between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government and Israel and the United States, because what you're doing is you have the Arab leadership now willing to go to Rome and talk with Secretary Rice.

But the people -- the people are angry at Israel and the United States and see this as a one-sided deal, the U.S. speeding delivery of more military munitions, more of those F-15 U.S.-made fighter jets bombing away at Lebanon. How do you imagine that that won't result in animosity and generations of people who are just furious?

GIGOT: So you're furious because we're sending targeted weapons, these smart weapons that can explicitly ... WILLIAMS: Have you seen the pictures, Paul?

GIGOT: Look, it's a very difficult situation. But the smart weapons actually do less damage. We ought to speed more weapons over there because they'll do less damage to civilians.

WILLIAMS: I think the weapons they're speeding over there are those bunker busters that are going to do more damage.

GIGOT: Thank God for the bunker busters, because...

KRISTOL: Yes, there aren't a lot of civilians...

GIGOT: ... that means you're going to get these people 100 feet down.

KRISTOL: There aren't a lot of innocent Lebanese civilians in bunkers. It's the senior leadership of Hezbollah, and they need to be killed.

WILLIAMS: Well, General...

KRISTOL: And this operation will fail, I'm afraid...

WILLIAMS: But, General Kristol, General Kristol...

KRISTOL: ... if they don't succeed in wiping out...

WILLIAMS: ... you understand we're fighting people who are a guerrilla unit. They hide in civilian -- they hide in apartment buildings, under apartment buildings. So we're saying okay, we know you've got to go get them, and we're apparently saying therefore go get the Lebanese...

KRISTOL: I'm sorry, the Israeli army broadcasts and drops leaflets telling civilians to leave.

WILLIAMS: OK.

KRISTOL: They've done that throughout south Lebanon.

WILLIAMS: True.

KRISTOL: They've been incredibly careful. They've aborted bombing raids when they've said there were too many civilians that might be killed. The U.S. and Israeli armies have conducted the wars in Iraq and this war in Lebanon with incredible attempts to minimize civilian damages.

HUME: Well, let's have a cease-fire for a moment while we take a break and give our sponsors a chance. But we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: And we're back with Paul, Mara, Bill and Juan.

As I mentioned to Ambassador Bolton earlier, the deputy foreign minister of Syria has said that that country is ready to engage in dialogue with the United States based, he said, on respect and mutual interest.

Mara, do you think that could be interpreted as some sort of diplomatic signal that Syria is ready to play here, to restrain Hezbollah, to do something?

LIASSON: Well, I don't know. But I do know that the United States is clearly looking to Syria, not Iran, as the target of diplomacy here. Syria is the weaker power, and while they don't provide the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that Iran does to support Hezbollah, they are the conduit for all the weapons that come from Iran into Lebanon and to Hezbollah.

I think that the United States is hoping that Syria, being the weaker player here, has more to lose and perhaps would be more affected by some kind of a full court press.

Now, what exactly Syria would want -- you know, in the beginning days after 9/11, Syria was said to be quite helpful to the U.S. in terms of counterterrorism intelligence, but those ties were never built on, and the United States certainly never developed any kind of a productive relationship.

HUME: Well, Syria emerged as a big problem in Iraq.

LIASSON: Now it's emerged as a big problem in Iraq. It's kind of a conduit for everything bad to travel through. But I think that's the hope. And the question is after all these years of not developing a relationship with them, what can you do now. HUME: Bill, this gets us to this whole issue of the greater Middle East and how it is aligning on this issue. It has been striking the extent to which the Arab states, to include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others, have not joined in the familiar calls for blaming Israel and so on and has been critical -- and those countries have been critical of Hezbollah.

Is something changing over there that may last?

KRISTOL: I think U.S. diplomacy has actually been quite good in this case, A. B, it disproves those who said an intervention in Iraq would just drive the whole Arab world into fanatical anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli sentiment.

The Arab world is more -- seems to be more pro-Israel than they ever have been. But that's because they're scared of Iran, obviously, and scared of Hezbollah, which is more than just some guerrilla group. They have a state-within-a-state that is an Iranian outpost on the border of Israel and also right there smack in the middle of the Arab world.

And I hope the administration can succeed in meeting with the Saudis, to get the Saudis to pressure the Syrians and induce the Syrians to sort of break or limit relations with Iran and stop being a conduit for Iranian arms and money to Hezbollah.

But I'm a little dubious that that sort of double bank shot is going to work, and I worry that we are depending a little bit too much on that hope and not being willing to confront the problem, which is Iran.

WILLIAMS: Do you really believe that somehow the people are now less -- more supportive of the U.S. and Israel because of what we've done inside Iraq?

KRISTOL: The argument was that our intervention in Iraq would destroy any hopes for decent relations with the Arab world or for the Arabs to accept the state of Israel. And that certainly hasn't happened.

If anything, they seem to be perfectly -- the Saudis are flying here to the U.S. We're intervening...

WILLIAMS: Let me offer you a different point of view, Bill. A different point of view would suggest that possibly because we have weakened Iraq, done away with Saddam Hussein, we have strengthened Iran, and people are afraid of some kind of Iranian hegemony taking over the region and their aspirations.

And so you have the leadership of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and even to some extent maybe, hopefully for our purposes, Syria a little worried about the growing power of people who want to do away with Israel and who have crazy ambitions and may want nuclear weapons.

That's the worry, but it's a worry that therefore we have to peel away, as Mara was saying, Syria from Iran. Make it clear that it's in their economic benefit, it's in their long-range military benefit, to have more friendship and allies with the Saudis, Israel, the United States, than with Iran. That's the whole hope.

But I don't believe we have somehow made friends for Israel and for ourselves by attacking and what's going on in that -- I mean, you see how many people have continued to die in Iraq just this weekend. That's not a success.

GIGOT: The problem with Assad is that he's always been playing a double game. He wants to hurt us in Iraq. He wants to foment trouble elsewhere. And then at the same time he says he wants a relationship with us.

We've never really sent a clear message, even the Bush administration -- sent a clear message saying look, you will pay a price if you do these things; if you don't do these things, you can have a relationship with us.

Secretary Rice says he has to make a choice. We've never really confronted him with that choice. And I think now would be a good moment to do that.

WILLIAMS: Well, if Israel goes into Lebanon, apparently Syria says they'll then go to war against it. So maybe that's the choice. Maybe that would be...

KRISTOL: I think I would just modify what Paul said, that we have actually sent that message to Assad repeatedly -- you'll pay a price for allowing terrorists to come in to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, you'll pay a price for being a conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah. We've just never made him pay the price.

GIGOT: Yes.

KRISTOL: And I'm worried that now we're hoping the Saudis are going to induce Assad to do things when we have never been able to really put it -- you know, we blustered about Syria, but then we pulled our punches.

HUME: Mara, should we be talking to Syria directly? I mean, it's pretty clear we're not doing that. I mean, you know, you heard what Bolton said this morning.

LIASSON: Yes, we don't have an ambassador there. She's been recalled.

HUME: Well, we do have a mission there.

LIASSON: We have an embassy but not an ambassador at the moment. Why not? I don't know what would be the problem. I think the thing for the Bush administration is it kind of eschewed diplomacy for so long in favor of force, and drawing clear lines, and we don't talk to people who are terrorists or support terrorists.

Now all of a sudden we need those people and we want to work with them. GIGOT: Mara, I don't agree with that about Syria. Colin Powell went over to Syria, to Damascus, right after the Gulf War was over and said look, you have a choice, Mr. Assad, you can be with us or you can -- join the new Middle East or you can create trouble.

He basically has created trouble. We've never forced him to confront that choice or pay a price.

HUME: That's it, panel, but thank you very much. We'll see you next week.