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 Monday night's dinner at the State Department for participants in the Mideast peace conference was akin to the Super Bowl of suppertime protocol.
What to serve guests without offending either Muslim or kosher sensitivities?
Who should be seated next to whom when some guests shudder at the notion of even being photographed together?
This part was easy: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the host of the affair, sat front and center. On either side of her were Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the most pivotal of this array of players.
"Madam Secretary, thank you for your hospitality," President Bush said. Looking around, he joked: "I was wondering where my place is."
Actually, he didn't stay. He instead talked of the common goal -- two states, Israel and Palestine, living in harmony
-- and reminded the representatives from more than 40 Mideast delegations that he was personally committed to the cause. It took him about two minutes.
To cap off his toast, Bush stepped forward to clink glasses with Abbas and Olmert; his had water in it. Theirs had iced tea.
Then Bush worked the room for several minutes, although he still made it back to the White House more than 15 minutes ahead of schedule.
Many of the people in the room have had frosty relations for decades, if they were on speaking terms at all, due to continuing conflict over the future of the fractured Middle East.
"We will, of course, be respectful of the various relationships, or the various states of relationships, among the participants," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "These are all experienced professionals. I would expect that they are going to be focused on the tasks at hand."
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 The dinner guests gathered in the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room, which has seen scores of high-profile diplomatic pronouncements but perhaps none fraught with as much delicate protocol as this one. The guests sat in wooden-backed chairs around circular tables tucked neatly across the room.
The meal, keyed to both kosher and Muslim dietary restrictions, included main entrees of either red and yellow beet salad with mango with curried mango dressing or honey-soy glazed sea bass with cabbage, snow peas and mushrooms. Sitting at tables adorned with light-maroon tablecloths, gold flowers and gold napkins, guests also were to dine on carrot timbale, sugar snap peas, iced tea and hazelnut sponge cake.
The State Department did not respond to a request for details on the seating arrangements.
But this much is known: Should Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal encounter Olmert, neither was likely to join in any historic Arab-Israeli handshakes
-- not beneath the room's Adam-style cut-glass chandeliers, atop a Savonnerie-style carpet with the Great Seal of the United States or anywhere else.
Saud was asked Monday whether he would shake hands with Olmert and gave a curt no.
"We are here for the serious business of making peace," Saud said. "It is not a sporting contest where you shake hands and let the best man win."
Olmert, for his part, declared: "If someone doesn't want to shake my hand, I won't extend mine."
There were no plans for Bush or Rice to run interference.
"That's going to be up to all of the representatives how they decide to interact," McCormack said.
[Associated
Press; By HOPE YEN]
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