Whether the next administration is Democratic or Republican, it will continue to play the role of peacemaker in the Middle East, vice presidential candidates Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney affirmed during their televised debate on Thursday, Oct. 5.

Moderator Bernard Shaw of Cable News Network, alluding to the battling last week between Palestinians and Israelis at the Temple Mount in Jersualem, asked the candidates whether U.S. policy towards the Middle Peace is "what it should be?"

Lieberman, the Democratic candidate and the first Jew ever nominated by a major party for that office, promptly replied "Yes it is," then told of his feelings whiile watching the violence escalate:

"It has truly pained me in the last week, Bernie, to watch the unrest and the death occurring in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians. So much work has been done by the people there with the support of this administration. So much progress has been made in the original Oslo Agreements between the Israelis and the Palestinians adopted in 1993 and the peace between Israel and Jordan thereafter."

Lieberman, a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, said the United States has a "national strategic and principled interest in peace in the Middle East" and added "I hope and pray that the death and unrest in the last week will not create the kind of scars that make it hard for them to go back to the peace table with American assistance, and achieve what I'm convinced the great majority of the Israeli and Palestinian people want, indeed people throughout the Middle East, which is peace."

Characterizing the role played by President Bill Clinton's administration in the Middle East as "very constructive," Lieberman said: "I commit that Al Gore and I will continue to do that. I hope I might, through my friendships in Israel and throughout the Arab world, play a unique role in bringing peace to this sacred region of the world."

Cheney, the Republican candidate who had served as Secretary of Defense during the administration of his running mate's father, President George Bush, noted that numerous administrations since the time of World War II "have had to wrestle with the problem of what should happen to the Middle East.

"We made significant breakthroughs, I think, at the end of the Bush administration because of the Gulf War. In effect, we had joined together with Arab allies and done enormous damage to the Iraqi armed forces, and Iraq, at the time, was the biggest military threat to Israel."

The disintegration of the Soviet Union made it easier for the United States to operate in the Middle East, because there no longer was an adversary able to "fish in troubled waters whenever they had the opportunity in the Middle East," Cheney said. 

The Bush Administration was able to "reassure both Arabs and Israelis that the United States would play a major role there, that we had the ability and the will to deploy forces to the region if we had to engage in military operations to support our friends and oppose our foes," Cheney said. "And of course we were able to convene the Madrid conference that in effect was the first time Arabs and Israelis sat down face to face and began this process of trying to move the peace process forward."

(The latter comment was a misstatement by Cheney, as a decade before the Madrid Peace Conference, Arabs and Israelis were brought together for face-to-face meetings by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, leading to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.)

Cheney praised the assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as a great man "who had the military stature to be able to confidently persuade the Israelis, I think, to take some risks for peace. I think Prime Minister Barak has tried the same thing.

"I hope that we can get this resolved as soon as possible," Cheney said about the peace process. "My guess is that the next administration is going to be the one that's going to have to come to grips with the current state of affairs there. I think it's very important that we have an administration where we have a president with firm leadership who has the kind of track record of dealing straight with people, of keeping his word so that friends and allies both respect us and our adversaries fear us."

In his next question, Shaw noted that the current Republican presidential candidate, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, had said if Iraq's President Saddam Hussein were found to be developing weapons of mass destruction, he would "take him out." He asked Cheney if he agreed with such a "deadly policy."

"We might have no other choice," Cheney replied. "We'll have to see if that happens."

Cheney said that since President Bush left office -- and President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore took power -- the coalition created by President Bush has "started to fray on us."

"Recently the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Gulf States, have reopened diplomatic relations with Baghdad," he said. "The Russians and the French now are flying commercial airlines back into Baghdad and sort of thumbing their nose, if you will, at the international sanctions regime. And of course the U.N. Inspectors have been kicked out. And there's been absolutely no response. 

"So we're in a situation today where I think our posture, vis-a-vis Iraq is weaker than it was at the end of the war. I think that's unfortunate. I also think it is unfortunate that we find ourselves in a position where we don't know for sure what might be transpiring inside Iraq."

As for Saddam possibly having weapons of mass destruction, "I certainly hope he's not regenerating that kind of capability," Cheney said. "But if he were, if in fact Saddam Hussein were taking steps to try to rebuild nuclear capability or weapons of mass destruction, you'd have to give very serious consideration to military action to stop that activity. I don't think you can afford to have a man like Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons, say, in the Middle East."

Lieberman said it would be a "very serious situation if we had evidence, credible evidence, that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. But I must say I don't think a political campaign is the occasion to declare exactly what we would do in that case. I think that's a matter of such critical national security importance that it ought to be left to the commander in chief, the leaders of the military, the secretary of state to make that kind of decision without the heat of a political campaign."

The Democratic nominee said "we will not enjoy real stability in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein is gone." He said along with Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi he was a co-sponsor of the Iraq Liberation Act, and has "kept in touch with the indigenous Iraqi opposition broad based to Saddam Hussein. Vice President Gore and I met with them earlier this year. We are supporting them in their efforts and we will continue to support them until the Iraqi people rise up and do what the people of Serbia have done in the last few days, get rid of a despot. We will welcome you back into the family of nations where you belong."

Lieberman also noted that he and Gore, who was then a U.S. Senator, crossed party lines to support the resolution supporting the Gulf War.

American policy in the Middle East was by far a more prominent feature of the vice presidential debate held at Centre College in Danville, Ky., than it was in the first presidential debate held two evenings before at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

In the Oct 3 debate between Vice President Gore and Gov. Bush, moderator Jim Lehrer of the Public Broadcasting System asked "How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force generally?"

Bush said it would depend if the issue was "in our national interest, and that means whether a territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not...our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not the friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win, whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously, I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops..."

Gore said "we should be reluctant to get involved in some place in a foreign country. But if our national security is at stake, if we have allies, if we have tried every other course, if we're sure military action will succeed, and if the costs are proportionate to the benefits, we should get involved. Just because we don't want to get involved everywhere doesn't mean we should back off anywhere it comes up. I disagree with the proposal that maybe only when oil supplies are at stake that our national security is at risk. I think that there are situations like in Bosnia or Kosovo where there's a genocide."