The Middle East Quartet is expected to release its long-awaited statement on direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians Friday, as negotiations at the U.N. continued into late Thursday afternoon.

State Department officials had been sure that the statement, a formal invitation for both parties to enter direct negotiations, would be released earlier this week. But last-minute objections from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides forced new rounds of discussions, culminating in what Reuters reported was a conference call between Quartet members Thursday afternoon to discuss the latest draft.

"There are details that are still being worked out. You could quote Yogi Berra, I suppose, ‘It's not over till it's over,'" State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday. "We think we're very, very close to an agreement."

Multiple diplomatic sources confirmed that the substance of the reported draft represents a compromise intended to accommodate the Palestinians' calls for the pending Quartet statement to include several specific items that they believe are "terms of reference" for the direct talks but which the Israeli side sees as "preconditions" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to reject.

The apparent compromise would result in a statement whereby the Quartet reaffirms a "full commitment to its previous statements," according to Reuters, a reference to the March 19 Quartet statement issued in Moscow, but doesn't explicitly repeat certain contentious language from that document.

Among the disputed items in that statement, which Netanyahu ultimately rejected, were calls for a Palestinian state to be established in 24 months and for Israel to halt all settlement building, including natural growth of existing settlements, as well as building and evictions in East Jerusalem.

Neither side wants to be seen as resisting the move to direct talks, which the Obama administration has been pushing hard to begin before Netanyahu's 10-month settlement moratorium expires next month. If the Quartet is able to get its new statement out Friday, it will be about a week later than State Department sources had predicted, due to some extra shuttle diplomacy that the U.S. team had not anticipated.

When Special Envoy George Mitchell traveled to the region last week, he believed he had a deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over the wording of the statement, but it was clear upon arrival that Abbas had additional concerns, multiple diplomatic sources said.

So, Mitchell called back home to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to inform her that the Palestinians were not on board. After further negotiations, Abbas set forth his demands for what the statement should include, but when Mitchell brought those terms to Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister told Mitchell he couldn't accept them.

"We wanted the statement to include the same elements the March 19 statement included," the PLO's Washington representative Maen Rashid Areikat, who is in the region, told The Cable in an interview.

"The Quartet statement must be clear about how the quartet sees the terms of reference, the time frame, and the situation on the ground, such as the cessation of settlement activity," Areikat said.

Mitchell was forced to return to Washington empty-handed, but left the National Security Council's David Hale in the region to continue working the problem and negotiations continued.

Mitchell's trip wasn't a failure, according to Areikat. "I believe it was part of an overall discussion of progress with the parties, and if we see progress in the statement it will have been worth it," he said.

The Quartet seems to be calculating that by referring to the March 19 statement but not repeating the items explicitly, Israel will be able to accept the invitation to the talks without technically backing down from its demand that no preconditions be set. Netanyahu has repeatedly called for direct talks to begin forthwith.

Although it's too early to tell because the final Quartet statement hasn't been released, the compromise might be crafty enough to get the job done.

"I believe we could be able to accept such a statement if it doesn't assume to determine the terms of reference and doesn't pre-empt the negotiations," one Israeli official told The Cable, responding to a query about the leaked draft.

Some reports blamed the delay on disputes inside the Quartet between the United States and the EU, largely about the same issues. But one European diplomat in Israel said that these reports were misleading and the real dispute was over how to accommodate both the Israelis and Palestinian on substance and choreography.

There is a sense of urgency about the Quartet statement, because Friday is seen as the last day that key U.S. officials, including Clinton, will be working before their August vacations and because preparations will be needed to get the direct talks underway in time to beat the deadline, assuming there are no further delays.

The State Department has been working the issue hard, and Clinton has spoken in the last 24 hours with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh of Jordan, Quartet Representative Tony Blair, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

If the Quartet can act Friday, diplomatic sources said the direct talks could commence in as little as a few days but probably no later than two weeks from now.

Crowley predicted that the United States would issue an accompanying statement that will have some additional details, such as where and when the negotiations will take place.

Crowley wouldn't comment on speculation that the administration's statement is meant to accommodate Netanyahu's concerns about the scope of the negotiations and provide him with domestic political cover.

"Members of the Quartet will demonstrate their support for the process, we will demonstrate our support for the process, and we will outline specifics of where we go from here," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced a new international panel to oversee investigations into the Gaza flotilla incident, a decision that came after heavy U.S. involvement and with the support of the Israeli government.

The four-member panel will be led by the former prime minister of New Zealand, Geoffrey Palmer, and the outgoing president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe. Turkey and Israel will each appoint one member in the coming days, both expected to be high-level diplomats or judicial officials.  It will meet on Aug. 10 and issue its first report in September. U.S. representative to the U.N. Susan Rice issued a statement Monday praising the panel and clearly defining its limits.

"This panel is not a substitute for those national investigations.  It complements them, affording Israel and Turkey the opportunity to present the conclusions of their investigations to the international community," she said. "The focus of the panel is appropriately on the future and on preventing such incidents from recurring."

A U.S. official speaking on background said that Rice was heavily involved in the formation of the panel and met or spoke with several senior Israeli officials about it in the past weeks, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

"The U.S. was in close communication with Israel throughout the process to make sure this ended up in what we felt and they felt was a constructive place and we believe this is a good outcome," the official said.

The Israeli public reaction was a positive one. Netanyahu released a statement saying, "Israel has nothing to hide. The opposite is true. It is in the national interest of the State of Israel to ensure that the factual truth of the overall flotilla events comes to light throughout the world and this is exactly the principle that we are advancing."

An Israeli official told The Cable that the panel was a compromise in the face of repeated calls for an international investigation coming from both the U.N. and some of the countries involved, including Turkey.

"We're not thrilled about it. It's a kind of compromise but it is in the general framework of an improved political climate," the official said, noting the need to repair relations between Israel and Turkey as well as the positive steps taken by the Arab League in endorsing the move to direct peace talks between the Israeli and Palestinian governments last week in Cairo.

"It's not investigative. It's a panel. A fair and balanced panel that allows us to sort of live with it," the official said. Notably, this is the first time an Israeli will sit on a U.N. panel that is commenting on Israeli actions.

The new U.N. panel will likely head off an inquiry by the U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva. That body, which includes several countries critical of Israel, might have launched its own investigation if Ban had not acted.

The U.S. involvement in forming the panel has a tinge of self-interest as well. Had the Human Rights Council been allowed to proceed, that might have created a precedent paving the way for future investigations into U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Palestine Liberation Organization praised Ban's panel as a victory for those who have been fighting for an international investigation and believe it will take a new look into the flotilla incident.

"We are very happy that at the end of the day, despite the refusal in the beginning to go along with this position ... that Israel finally complied with this global consensus regarding the need for this international investigation," the PLO's "permanent observer" at the U.N., Riyad Mansour, told The Cable in an interview.

Mansour said his understanding is that the panel will investigate the incident from scratch, with an eye toward bringing anyone who violated international law to justice -- a description that appeared to be at odds with the more limited scope put forth by Rice.

"The next issue will be where the report of this panel will be dealt with. We believe it should be the Security Council, because it was the Security Council who requested it," Mansour said.

Even before the release of tens of thousands of classified Afghanistan war documents Sunday, a clearly worried Obama administration had embarked on an aggressive campaign to reach out to domestic and international stakeholders in the hopes of mitigating the fallout.

Administration officials, alerted to the pending leak of reams of reports from the warzone by news organizations, launched a two-pronged, preemptive response: They started calling around to leaders of foreign governments who might be affected to warn them of the story and allay any concerns about U.S. government involvement in the leak, and started working Capitol Hill to limit any misinterpretation as congressmen reacted to the disclosures, which include reports accusing Pakistani intelligence operatives of links to anti-coalition attacks.

"Once we became aware of the existence of this story, we proceeded with several country notifications, as is the case when we are aware of major news stories," a senior administration official told The Cable. "These notifications included Afghanistan and Pakistan, at multiple levels, as well as Germany and the U.K. (given that the documents were leaked to the foreign news outlets Der Spiegel and the Guardian)."

"We've also been in touch with members and staff on the Hill over the last couple of days," the senior administration official said.

One particularly important call was between Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. Zardari has at times tangled with his country's top spy agency, the powerful Inter Services Intelligence directorate, and Holbrooke himself said last week while in India that "The links between the ISI and the Taliban are a problem."

Other than Holbrooke, officials involved in the notifications included U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who happened to be in Pakistan and held a high-level meeting with Pakistani officials Saturday night.

After leaving Pakistan for Afghanistan, Mullen had the difficult task of assuring Afghan tribal leaders that the U.S. government was aware and dealing with the problem of Pakistani links to Afghan insurgents. "I've raised that issue. The Pakistani leadership knows it's a priority," he said Monday at a meeting at a U.S. military base outside Kandahar, according to Agence France Press. "Long-term pressure" on Islamabad, he said, would likely bear fruit.

Although some press reports cited anonymous Pakistani sources speculating that the Obama administration was behind the document dump, Pakistani civilian leaders contacted by the administration over the last couple of days appeared to accept that the U.S. government had no role in the leaks. The message to the Pakistanis was that the information was old, not reliable, and shouldn't derail ongoing and increasing cooperation between the two governments.

"The White House succeeded in calming our people," said one Pakistani source. "I think we've contained the damage on this one, at least on our end."

"Obviously we'll be watching closely to see how various countries and populations respond to the information that's here," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who added that the State Department believes Pakistan is committed "at the leadership level" to rooting out terrorists. According to Crowley, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was contacted directly. "We also gave a heads-up to India," he said.

Jones was also working the phones Sunday night and hosting meetings for foreign representatives at the White House Monday to make sure there was no ill will resulting from the revelations. Jones's statement released Sunday night praised recent Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorism and included the line, "These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."

The administration's relationship with the ISI has apparently not been derailed by the Wikileaks disclosures. ISI chief Lt Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha is expected to visit Washington soon, one of a series of meetings he's been having with U.S. officials.

On the Hill, offices contacted included those of Senate Foreign Relations heads John Kerry, D-MA, and Richard  Lugar, R-IN, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, House Foreign Affairs chairman Howard Berman, D-CA, House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton, D-MO, and others.

One source said that Skelton's statement, which heavily criticized the actions by Wikileaks and praised recent Pakistani cooperation using themes similar to Jones's statement, was coordinated with the administration. Skelton could not be reached for comment.

"It is critical that we not use outdated reports to paint a picture of the cooperation of Pakistan in our efforts in Afghanistan," Skelton said. "Since these reports were issued, Pakistan has significantly stepped up its fight against the Taliban, including efforts that led to the capture of the highest-ranking member of the Taliban since the start of the war."

Other leading Democrats were more critical of Pakistan.

"Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency," read Levin's statement. "When Sen. Jack Reed and I visited Pakistan this month, we strongly urged the Pakistanis to take forceful action against militant networks using Pakistan as a base to attack Afghanistan and our troops."

The administration got some rare support Monday from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CT, who condemned the leak in a statement. "The disclosure of tens of thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war is profoundly irresponsible and harmful to our national security, Lieberman said.

The State Department said it had not decided whether one person, such as Private Bradley Manning, who already stands accused of leaking classified information to Wikileaks, was the source of the documents.

"We're trying to determine if this is related to that ongoing investigation or a new leak," Crowley said.

As this week's warm Washington welcome for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly intended to show, U.S.-Israeli relations are certainly on the mend. But President Obama's new deadline for moving the Israeli and Palestinian sides to direct talks is looming large over the peace process -- setting the stage for a summer of frantic diplomacy after 18 months of little discernable progress and raising the risks of a dramatic failure on one of his signature diplomatic priorities.

Obama announced the deadline after meeting privately with Netanyahu Tuesday, saying he wants the direct talks to begin "well before" Israel's 10-month settlement freeze expires at the end of September.

An Israeli official told The Cable that Obama and Netanyahu discussed specific confidence-building measures that Israel could take to help get to the direct talks by the deadline. The details of those measures are being closely held, but they are intended to show tangible evidence that Israel really wants to move the peace process forward.

The Israelis see Obama's deadline as a useful tool to press the Palestinians to move to direct talks -- but warn that if face-to-face negotiations don't start by the time the settlement freeze expires, it will be difficult for Netanyahu to justify extending it.

"If it was up to the prime minister, it would have happened yesterday," the Israeli official said. "There's only so much that can be demanded of Israel for just sitting down and talking," the official said. "There should be now a lot of pressure on Palestinians."

Obama didn't bring up the settlement freeze in his meeting with Netanyahu. "It wasn't discussed," the official said, "but obviously it's going to be an issue in three months' time."

For their part, the Palestinians see a continuation of the settlement freeze as a precursor to serious face-to-face negotiations, not a reward.

"I hope [Obama's deadline] is not an attempt to pressure the Palestinians that if they don't move to the direct talks, there will be a resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank," PLO representative Maen Rashid Areikat told The Cable.

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Obama is trying to delink the settlement freeze from the move to direct negotiations. The thinking is that if direct talks begin first, "by the time the Israeli government reaches the decision point [on extending the freeze], there will already be a different context."

But Netanyahu will have trouble justifying an extension of the settlement freeze either way, Satloff argued, and the Palestinians could manipulate the situation by accepting direct talks in some sort of symbolic way while keeping the U.S. heavily involved and making few concessions. This would shift the pressure back to Netanyahu, who would then have little progress he could use to convince the Israeli public that the settlement freeze worked.

Netanyahu had lunch Tuesday with almost the entire Obama Israel team, including Vice President Joseph Biden, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Special Envoy George Mitchell, Ambassador James Cunningham, U.S. Representative Susan Rice, and NSC staffers Tom Donilon, Dennis Ross, and Dan Shapiro.

Among those on the Israel side of the table were National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, Ambassador Michael Oren, policy advisor Ron Dermer, and special advisor Isaac Molcho, who has served as an important go-between in recent months.

The kosher lunch menu included chopped White House garden salad with honey-apple cider dressing, thyme-roasted chicken with spring peas, leek puree and potato croutons, with apricot torte with White House honey ice cream for dessert (dairy-free, of course).

On Tuesday afternoon, Clinton, Mitchell, Cunningham, and Assistant Secretary Jeff Feltman went to see Netanyahu at Blair House for a 45-minute working meeting that largely tracked Netanyahu's White House meetings. Gates came to Blair House Wednesday morning for a one-on-one with Netanyahu that focused on bilateral defense cooperation.

Netanyahu traveled to New York Wednesday afternoon to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He will address the Conference of Major Jewish Organizations Wednesday night and give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday before heading back to Jerusalem.

The White House confirms that President Obama will sign into law Thursday sweeping new measures to impose unilateral penalties on companies that contribute to broad swaths of Iran’s energy and banking sectors.

The signing will take place in the East Room of the White House, and will include "members of Congress, leaders of organizations that worked to pass the bill," and U.S. officials including U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, according to an adminstration official.

The legislation, led by Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-CT, and House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, D-CA, was passed by the House and Senate last week by votes of 408-8 and 99-0, respectively.

The administration has said repeatedly that implementing the sanctions does not signal an end to its two-track policy of mixing engagement and pressure. The White House hopes the measures will convince Iran to come back to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Iran is planning to meet again with Brazil and Turkey to follow up on the nuclear fuel-swap deal the three countries announced just before the U.N. Security Council voted to impose its own new sanctions on Tehran. The Obama administration has been clear that it considers the Brazil-Turkey deal insufficient and inadequate in dealing with international concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.

The White House is pushing back hard against a claim by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol that the administration is preparing to support an independent U.N. investigation into the Gaza flotilla incident.

Kristol, writing on the Weekly Standard blog, claimed he had heard, "the administration intends to support an effort next week at the United Nations to set up an independent commission, under UN auspices, to investigate Israel's behavior in the Gaza flotilla incident."

The White House quickly and sharply denied that account.

A  White House official told multiple reporters, "We've said from the beginning that we support an Israeli-led investigation into the flotilla incident that is prompt, credible, impartial, and transparent. We are open to different ways of ensuring the credibility of this Israeli-led investigation, including international participation."

The official also said, "We know of no resolution that will be debated at the U.N. on the flotilla investigation next week."

Kristol's allegation, and the White House's rebuttal of it, is further illustration of the ongoing tension between some in the pro-Israel advocacy community and the administration over how strongly and aggressively to defend Israel in the international arena.

While it's true there is no specific resolution expected, sources close to the issue say, what pro-Israel leaders like Kristol are worried about are continuing calls for tougher measures against Israel, such as the vote in the Human Rights Council, and whether or not the administration will really oppose them with vigor.

That point is made clearly in the first line of a letter addressed to the president that is currently being finalized by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY. In a rare show of bipartisan comity, the two Senate leaders are calling on Obama not just to oppose new efforts to isolate Israel at the U.N., but to openly declare America's support for the Jewish state.

"We write to affirm our support for our strategic partnership with Israel, and encourage you to continue to do so before international organizations such as the United Nations," the letter reads.

Commending the administration for working to craft a presidential statement by the U.N. Security Council that didn't call for an international investigation in the first place, the senators asked him not to support any new ones.

"Israel has announced its intention to promptly carry out a thorough investigation of this incident
and has the right to determine how its investigation is conducted," they wrote. "In the meantime, we ask you to stand firm in the future at the United Nations Security Council and to use your veto power, if necessary, to prevent any similar biased or one-sided resolutions from passing."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stunned the world Tuesday morning when she testified that the United States had reached an agreement with other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on a draft resolution leveling new sanctions against Iran. But there's one body that the administration still does not have an Iran sanctions agreement with: the U.S. Congress.

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers pledged to swiftly reconcile the two versions of the Iran sanctions legislation, one sponsored by Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-CT, and another led by House Foreign Affairs Committee head Howard Berman, D-CA.

"We hope it will move out of conference this week and be on the floor next week," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, said Tuesday.

"International sanctions make a lot more sense than unilateral ... But we're not going to retreat from the unilateral sanctions effort," said Dodd.

Inside the conference process, there's a lot going on. Conferees and non-conferees alike have been holding meetings on the legislation both at the staff and member level. Dodd and Berman have been engaged with the administration to work on the fixes the Obama team wants to see in the bill.

The drive to complete the bill quickly, ahead of the U.N. Security Council process, is bipartisan and bicameral. Republicans don't believe the U.N. language will be tough enough and are resisting administration efforts to have Congress wait for the U.N. track to play out. Democrats don't want to be pegged as weak on national security, and are cautiously trying to accommodate the administration's request for a delay.

But leading Republicans are growing impatient.

"I hope that the Democrats and the administration would move forward with that as quickly as possible. They clearly have been stalling for a long period of time," Senate Armed Services committee ranking member John McCain, R-AZ, told The Cable.

Americans are responding to President Obama's embrace of the United Nations with increased support of the organization, even as their support of Obama himself declines, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

New polling data shows that nationwide, Americans view the United Nations with increased praise and support. The national survey of 900 likely voters was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates from April 10-14 on behalf of the United Nations Foundation, a public charity that works closely with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The firms also conducted four focus groups in Virginia and Washingon, D.C. to round out their findings.

But while the survey had some good news for the U.N., the news on respondents' views of the direction of America and the Obama administration wasn't so rosy.

According to the data, 60 percent of those surveyed had a positive view of the United Nations, that's up ten points from data only 10 months ago. Two-thirds said it is "an organization that's still needed today." Thirty percent said they viewed the U.N. unfavorably and 26 percent said it had "outlived its usefulness."

"This new data confirms that Americans recognize that working together with our international partners through the U.N. is more effective than trying to solve the world's challenges alone," said Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation.

Natural disasters are the top news stories of the past few months, the survey found, and "The U.N.'s image has been impacted by a very positive news environment around the organization providing humanitarian relief during the natural disasters that have happened recently around the world," the organization's press memo argues.

But the same respondents criticized the Obama administration while praising the U.N.

As of April, only 36 percent of those surveyed said they believed the U.S.  is going in the "right direction," down from 41 percent last June. Fifty-eight percent said the country is on the "wrong track," up from 51 percent only 10 months prior. (That's still up from the 21 percent of people who said America was headed in the right direction when Obama took office.)

President Obama's direct approval rating fell to 49 percent in April, down from 57 percent last June. His disapproval rating rose from 38 to 47 percent during the same time period.

The survey also revealed some serious gaps in the knowledge base of Americans following foreign policy. For example,  although 78 percent of respondents claimed to "closely" follow international affairs, an equal 78 percent said they had "never heard" of Ban Ki-moon when asked about him.

When those surveyed were told that Ban was the secretary-general of the United Nations, 41 percent of respondents still had no idea who he was.

One of the main goals of the survey was to gather opinions on U.S. foreign assistance and the U.N.-led Millennium Development Goals. Eighty-seven percent said they supported U.S. involvement in achieving the goals by 2015.

But in a blow to Bono and a boost to North Dakota Sen.  Kent Conrad, only 40 percent of respondents said they would support spending an additional 1 percent of the U.S. budget on foreign assistance, with 55 percent opposed.

The margin of error for the sample was +/- 3.27 percent.

Former U.N. representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide is greatly exaggerating his new claims that he had months of discussions with senior Taliban leaders, his former top deputy tells The Cable.

"He was not meeting with senior Taliban leaders," said Peter Galbraith, who was Eide's No. 2 and close friend until Eide fired him for raising questions about the U.N.'s lack of action over the massive election fraud perpetrated by President Hamid Karzai's government last September, in an interview. "He's greatly exaggerating."

Galbraith, who was aware of the meetings but did not participate in them, said that they were with lower-level people who may or may not have had ties to the Taliban.

"The meetings were not particularly often and it was never clear where these people stood and what their connections were to the Taliban," he said, suggesting they might have been disgruntled former Taliban associates.

Galbraith also rejected Eide's contention that the recent arrests of Afghan Taliban leaders by the Pakistani military was the reason the talks broke down, as Eide claims.

"The discussions ended when he left UNAMA," he said, referring to the removal of Eide by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in December. "The arrests have nothing to do with it."

Galbraith is clearly no disinterested observer, but Special Representative Richard Holbrooke also said Friday that the recent arrests and the drive to pursue reconciliation with the Taliban have nothing to do with each other.

"We are extremely gratified that the Pakistani government has apprehended the No. 2 person in the Afghan Taliban ... this is a good thing," Holbrooke said. "It's not related [to reconciliation] ... We don't see this as linked."

The U.S. government was aware of Eide's discussions. "He had mentioned this to us in a general way," Holbrooke said, responding to questions posed by The Cable at a Friday press conference, adding that there was no U.S. involvement in the talks.

Holbrooke had called the press conference to discuss the next week's landmark meetings between the United States and Pakistan in Washington, the first round of the new "strategic dialogue" between the two countries.

"It's a major intensification of our partnership," said Holbrooke. "This is not a photo op ... this is an intense, serious dialogue between the U.S. and Pakistan."

The Pakistani delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and will also include Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, incoming Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Prime Minister Zardari's advisor Wazir Ali, Ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani, and many others.

The U.S. contingent will be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will include Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Holbrooke, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, NSC Senior Director David Lipton, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy, and many others.

The trilateral dialogue between the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will still go on and another meeting could come later this year, according to Holbrooke. Holbrooke is headed back to the region next week, stopping off in Brussels before going on to Afghanistan. He was going to stop in Pakistan but that became unnecessary because the Pakistanis are coming to Washington, he said.

The question of how to disperse billions of dollars of new aid to Pakistan, a point of contention between Holbrooke and Senate leaders, was discussed  during a high-level meeting at the White House Friday morning, Holbrooke said, where "almost every senior person in the United States foreign policy community was in the room."

The White House is pushing for Clinton-era National Security Advisor and Obama campaign advisor Tony Lake to be named the next head of UNICEF, a source working closely on U.N. issues tells The Cable.

The potential naming of Lake, the 70-year-old professor and former diplomat, to lead the agency could increase calls by European countries for a change in the custom of having an American at the helm, the source said. Others say that Lake's long experience and well-known reputation would make him a good fit for the job.

Spokesmen for the White House and the U.S. delegation at the U.N. would neither confirm nor deny that they are suggesting Lake for the job.

A UNICEF spokesman would only say, "The selection of a UNICEF executive director is made by the secretary general in consultation with the executive board."

That executive board meets Tuesday in what will be the last series of consultations before the term of current Executive Director Ann Venemen expires in April, so it would be logical that consultations over the next leader of the agency would commence, a U.N. source said.

Venemen, a former U.S. secretary of Agriculture, was appointed head of UNICEF in 2005 but wrote a letter Dec. 23 stating she would not see a second term.

The custom is that the U.S. recommendation for the post would be accepted and the head of UNICEF is traditionally an American. But such customs may be changing since the ascension of Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. For example, the U.N. Department of Management is no longer American-led.

"It's not codified anywhere that the U.S. has any special role in running UNICEF, although that's the practice," the U.N. source said.

Lake has a long and storied career in foreign policy and development, dating back to his time as an assistant to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., during the Vietnam War. More recently, he has spent nine years on the board of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and also has worked on children's welfare with the Marshall Legacy Institute, which tries to elevate the condition of children in war torn countries.

He was a senior foreign-policy advisor to the Obama campaign last year but wasn't nominated for any administration position. The Clinton administration withdrew Lake's name for CIA director amid controversy stemming from his failure to divest in energy stocks in 1993 and his failure to inform Congress that President Clinton condoned Iran's arm sales to Bosnia in 1994.

Lake's appointment to lead UNICEF is far from certain. The secretary general could ask the administration for a menu of names or could appoint someone else entirely.

"The secretary general consults widely among member states before reaching a decision of this kind on appointments of this nature," said his spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Lake could not be reached for comment.

Jide Zeitlin, the Obama administration's nominee to be America's point man for financial reform at the United Nations, has withdrawn himself from consideration for the job, an administration official tells The Cable.

Zeitlin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and telecom entrepreneur, had faced criticism for his business dealings related to Indian contractors and was also accused of identity fraud for an incident in which he admitted to sending an email to investors masked as coming from one of his competitors. Zeitlin testified before Congress that the email was a prank.

He was approved out of the Senate Foreign Relations committee in November. Just before his hearing, the Washington Post detailed some of his business dealings that have come under scrutiny. For example:

A New Delhi court last month ordered the liquidation of Zeitlin's wireless firm, Independent Mobile Infrastructure Ltd., which stands accused of failing to pay about $2.4 million in supplies, services and interest to a client. The client, Unitech Power Transmission, charged that Zeitlin's company reneged on an agreement to pay for 34 wireless towers as part of a larger deal to construct a network of 137 towers throughout India. The issue is still being litigated, with Zeitlin's firm contesting the liquidation and saying it is financially strong; a hearing is scheduled for March.

The police in Lucknow, India, got involved in the case just after Zeitlin's hearing and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-IN, followed up with Zeitlin about the incident. But Zeitlin denied the allegations and the charges were dropped. Very soon thereafter, the case was settled between IMIL and Shatakshi Contractors, according to settlement documents obtained by The Cable.

Zeitlin was also sued in 2007 by competitor American Tower over an incident where Zeitlin forwarded an article that contained negative information about the company to two of its biggest investors. Zeitlin admitted to using a computer program to make the email seem like it was sent by American Tower CEO James D. Taiclet, Jr.

"This was a joke that clearly fell flat," Zeitlin told the committee about the email.

But concerns about his nomination grew as rumors swirled around Washington and New York that Zeitlin was engaged in other activities that called into question his overall character and also may have included elements of identity fraud.

Specifically, one woman contacted several government offices and multiple news outlets, including The Cable, with allegations that Zeitlin had used deception to lure her into what eventually she claims was a romantic relationship. Those allegations could not be independently confirmed by The Cable. The administration official declined to comment as to whether they had been investigated as part of Zeitlin's vetting process or afterwards.

In his letter, Zeitlin said his withdrawal was due to "personal reasons," the administration official said.

"We appreciate his willingness to serve and wish him the best of luck in the future," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, when contacted about the story.

Zeitlin could not be reached for comment.

The House is preparing to vote on a resolution condemning the U.N.'s Goldstone Report, but not before making changes to the text to respond to the complaints of Goldstone himself.

Meanwhile in New York, the U.N. General Assembly was preparing for a possible vote on a resolution supporting the Goldstone Report on Wednesday and Arab U.N. delegations were circulating a draft today.

The Congressional resolution, which simply expresses the opinion of Congress and has no actual force of law, deems the report "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy," and "calls on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the [report] and any other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora."

Sponsored by House Foreign Affairs heads Howard Berman, D-CA, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL, the measure is expected to pass by a wide margin.

Justice Richard Goldstone, the primary author of the report, wrote a lengthy memorandum to the bill's sponsors criticizing the text of the House resolution. In a dear colleague letter circulated Monday, Berman and Gary Ackerman, D-NY, responded to each of Goldstone's complaints.

Chief among them was the issue of whether the U.N. Human Rights Council issued a mandate for the report that prejudged Israel's guilt in alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza operation. Berman and Ackerman rejected Goldstone's contention that he altered the mandate to include the examination of rocket attacks on Israel in addition to Israeli actions in Gaza.

"The broadened mandate Justice Goldstone sought was discussed, but not voted on, at an UNHRC plenary session. It was then announced via a press release in an altered formation, more restrictive than the formulation envisioned by Justice Goldstone," Berman and Ackerman wrote.

"Even though Justice Goldstone made earnest efforts to alter the mandate, he did not fully succeed ... we intend to alter the resolution to take account of Justice Goldstone's effort."

UPDATE: As expected, the House overwhelmingly passed the measure, with 344 members voting for, 36 voting against, and 22 voting "present."

Here are the new test portions of the resolution added before passage:

Whereas Justice Richard Goldstone, who chaired the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,' told the then-President of theUNHRC, Nigerian Ambassador Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, that he intended to broaden the mandate of the Mission to include "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after," a phrase that, according to Justice Goldstone, was intended to allow him to investigate Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians;

Whereas Ambassador Uhomoibhi issued a statement on April 3, 2009, that endorsed part of Justice Goldstone's proposed broadened mandate but deleted the phrase "before, during, and after," and added inflammatory
anti-Israeli language;

Whereas a so-called broadened mandate was never officially endorsed by a plenary meeting of the UNHRC, neither in the form proposed by Justice Goldstone nor in the form proposed by Ambassador Uhomoibhi;

And this clause has been expanded, so it now reads that resolution:

calls on the President and the Secretary of State to continue to strongly and unequivocally oppose any endorsement of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora, including through leading opposition to any United Nations General Assembly resolution and through vetoing, if necessary, any United Nations Security Council resolution that endorses the contents of this report, seeks to act upon the recommendations contained in this report, or calls on any other international body to take further action regarding this report.

Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who was removed today as the second highest ranking U.N. official in Afghanistan, gives a behind the scenes account of his dismissal in an interview with The Cable.

Chiefly, he blames his former longtime friend and boss Kai Eide, the U.N.'s top official in Kabul, for demanding that the U.N. remove Galbraith after differences between them over how to handle fraud in the Afghan elections spilled over into the press.

"Basically, it's my understanding that Kai told the U.N. leadership 'he goes or I go,'" Galbraith said, adding "It was clear that Kai had been lobbying strongly against my return" to Afghanistan after Galbraith took a leave from his post there earlier this month.

Galbraith was surprised to hear he had been sacked, especially since he and Eide had agreed on a specific time he would return to Afghanistan and because he had not been told anything and had to call in to the U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping to learn of his dismissal.

Eide, who long ago had introduced Galbraith to his wife, turned on him after their long running and multi-faceted dispute over how to handle the fraud discovered in the election became a public issue.

"He's hyper sensitive against the press coverage," Galbraith said of Eide, "And at some point he decided he had enough of me and he wanted me gone."

Although the differences between the two were many, he said, one key difference was over how to handle what Galbraith calls "ghost polling centers," mostly in the southern part of the country, where Galbraith said massive fraud took place.

"These ghost polling centers had no pollsters, never opened, but had huge potential for fraud and in fact the fraud took place at these polling centers," Galbraith said.

Additionally, Galbraith alleges that Eide refused to hand over to the electoral complaints commission massive evidence that their staff had collected about actual incidents of vote fraud. Staff was frustrated that their evidence was going to waste after they put themselves at risk to collect it, he said.

Another major dispute was over whether the independent election commission would abandon its published safeguards against fraud in the wake of the disputed election. Galbraith wanted those standards upheld but Afghan President Hamid Karzai protested and Eide sided with Karzai, Galbraith explained.

A senior U.S. diplomat told The Cable that Eide's repeated resistance to stronger anti-fraud measures both before and after the election was because his influence was directly tied to his relationship with Karzai.

"It's a classic case of clientilism," the diplomat said.

Galbraith said that his relationship with Eide broke down in mid September, when Eide returned from a trip away from Afghanistan and determined he and Galbraith weren't on the same page.

"He had no confidence that I would carry out his orders and I had no confidence in his leadership," said Galbraith.

Looking ahead, Galbraith said the U.N. can still play a constructive role in Afghanistan and that the process of examining sample ballots should move forward.

But, Galbraith quickly added, "If you don't have a run-off election, the crisis continues."

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today's briefing by spokesman Ian Kelly:

• Hillary Clinton had meetings in New York today with the foreign ministers of South Korea, Czech Republic, Turkmenistan, and Japan. Also meeting with the presidents of Costa Rica and Georgia and participate in a trilateral dialogue with Japan and Australia.

• Obama's trilateral meeting Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly may not actually produce any results, but it will "advance our efforts towards our ultimate goal" and "it shows that [Obama] is personally engaged in the effort," Kelly said. The U.N. Security Council meeting will be the first at the head of state level in some time.

• President Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras! "All I can say is reiterate our almost daily call on both sides to exercise restraint and refrain from any kind of action that would have any possible outcome in violence," said Kelly, adding "Of course, we believe that he's the democratic -- democratically elected and constitutional leader of Honduras." Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., disagrees.

• No comment on reports that the State Department is sitting on 25 visa applications from Iran.

• There are no plans to meet with the North Koreans in any way in New York this week and still no decision about whether Ambassador Stephen Bosworth will accept Kim Jong Il's invitation to travel there.