Kerry still believes in the "Global Test"

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Sen. John Kerry, on a Mideast tour taking him to Damascus for talks with President Bashar Assad, said today that the Bush administration's rejection of dialogue with Syria and Iran to try to calm Iraq is a mistake.

Kerry's trip is the latest in a growing tussle between the White House and Congress over the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that called for talks with Iran and Syria to win their help in stabilizing war-torn Iraq.

The Massachusetts Democrat said his visit to Syria was "a fact-finding mission" to explore "what might or might not affect behavior with respect to Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel and Iraq, where in each of those cases Syria is playing a role."

"Dialogue is an important thing. It's very hard to move the ball if you don't know firsthand what people's needs are, what their own perceptions are," Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press and several other journalists in Cairo.

Kerry said he was "willing" to go to Iran for talks but had no current plans to do so.

The White House said Thursday that trips to Syria by U.S. lawmakers were "inappropriate," giving a public relations victory for Damascus, which the Bush administration accuses of fueling crises in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Spokesman Tony Snow said a visit earlier this week by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. to Damascus, Kerry's visit and others planned by Democrat Christopher Dodd and Republican Arlen Specter send a mixed message to Syria.

...

The main message they send is that if Syria waits it can get a better deal than it can get right now. What this means is that those who are giving the Syrians hope are responsible for continued violence in Iraq and Lebanon. They are doing so under the false premise that we are not communicating with these regimes. We are. We are just not communicating a chance of a deal that will permit them to continue to make mischief. The Syrians have no doubt what behavioral changes are needed to reach a deal with the US. What Kerry and the other enablers are doing is giving them the false hope that they would give them more.

The NY Times reports that the White House also believes that the trips are undermining democracy in the region. Tony Snow noted that the last time Sen. Nelson came back from Syria he claimed that they were ready to negotiate with Israel, but in fact they were not ready for good faith negotiations and still are not.