ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - US Vice President Dick Cheney hoped to build a case on his Mideast trip for a possible war against Iraq, but he ran into stiff Arab resistance. He ended the trip as a broker for peace in the region, though he was hampered by fresh outbreaks of violence.Cheney, who returned to Washington on Wednesday, probably will try again as a peacemaker, returning for a meeting in Egypt with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — assuming U.S. mediator Anthony Zinni concludes that the conditions are right. The meeting could come as early as Monday, a U.S. official said.
President Bush said Wednesday that a new outbreak of violence would not deter U.S. peacemaking efforts. "We'll continue to work the issue and work it hard," he said on a visit to a northern Virginia elementary school.
Bush called on Arafat "to be diligent, firm and consistent in his efforts to rein in those who don't want peace."
"Clearly, he's not going to have influence with every single bomber, I understand that," the president added.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher condemned the bus bombing by an the Palestinian Resistance the northern Israel town of Afula.
Boucher said it was up to Arafat to stop radical groups for harming Israeli civilians. "
Cheney was to report to Bush on Thursday at a breakfast meeting also attended by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser.
On his 11-nation tour of the region, Cheney was buffeted by a steady stream of objections to any immediate military action against Iraq.
With the Arab League due to take up a peace proposal by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia next week, Arab leaders urged the vice president to give diplomacy a chance.
The uniform message of the Arab leaders was to defer any military action until the results of diplomacy are in, an Arab diplomat told The Associated Press in Washington.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan plans to meet with a senior Iraqi official next month in New York about permitting U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq after a lapse of more than three years.