NO TIME TO GO WOBBLY:

Syria's unlikely shepherd (Jim Lobe, 10/02/08, Asia Times)

Still, some observers voiced skepticism that the meetings signaled a major shift in Washington's willingness to seriously engage Damascus in the nearly four months before Bush leaves office.

"It's clearly time for a rethink of [Syria] policy, and I think Rice and others in the administration are trying to shepherd it forward," said Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma who publishes the widely read blog ww.syriacomment.com. "Rice is definitely open to it - and the whole Department of Defense has been kicking for this for a long time - but she can't get it past the White House."

He noted that Bush himself had referred to Syria as a ''sponsor of terrorism'' in his speech to the General Assembly just last week.

As with Iran and North Korea, the split between administration hawks and realists over Syria is a familiar one. While Rice's predecessor, former secretary of state Colin Powell, argued for engaging with Damascus both before and after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the hawks - then led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld - favored a policy of ''regime change'' against the government President Bashir al-Assad.