The topic is US foreign policy after the recent elections we shall try to examine this in the up coming panel.

In my view George W. Bush will not be a lame duck in foreign policy. Iraq is going to be the main focus with the focus moving slowly towards Iran.

The present situation in Iraq might give them the unintended option to divide and role in Iraq.

The mantra in D.C. is common ground. They might disagree on issues such as: abortion, Iraq and so on. But there is an agreement on relations towards Israel.

Iran should in my view be the most urgent issue on the American agenda.

As to the threat of terror and confrontation between the West and the fundamentalist the attitude isn’t just going to change.

The relations towards China won’t change, and the same goes for North-Korea and India.

One can imagine that for the US the war in Lebanon was disappointing, and will affect the attitude towards the countries in this region. We will hear the panel’s views on that shortly.

Handling Syria could be a point of disagreement between Israel and the US.

Will the US keep their ideas about the road map and will they continue to try and democratize the Middle East?

In fact the moderate Arab states have been using Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a shield to redirect demands from their own regimes; claiming that solving that problem will solve all the problems in the region.

What really scares the Moderate-Arab countries is an American deal with Iran.

What should worry us is that long-term democrats are becoming less pro Israel.

As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned, the US will put most of its bets on Abu-Mazen hoping that he will be the person they can talk with.