US point man for Mideast peace

He's low-profile, he's tough, and he's already proving himself effective at getting the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace.

Meet John Wolf, a career US diplomat assigned to monitor the implementation of the latest Middle East peace plan, the US-backed road map.

Or rather, don't meet him.

"The Embassy is not commenting on his whereabouts or his program," says a spokeswoman for the US mission in Tel Aviv. An official with the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, where Ambassador Wolf is setting up shop, confirmed Sunday only that he is "back in the region" after a trip to Washington.

Discretion is many a diplomat's trademark, but Wolf is no mere go- between. His job is to hold "both sides to account," in President Bush's phrase, and thereby ensure that Israelis and Palestinians deliver on their promises.

Wolf's mission is in part a testament to President Bush's newfound commitment to ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and at the same time an effort to correct a flaw in previous such efforts. Israelis and Palestinians alike criticize the so-called Oslo process of the 1990s - which splintered into violence nearly three years ago - because no one was charged with making the parties fulfill their commitments.

"This time everybody understands that we cannot fall into the pitfalls of Oslo, of overlooking things, of saying it'll be done later," says Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "You've got to insist on compliance; without this, the whole road map will collapse."

For the time being, Wolf plans to perform his mission away from public scrutiny. "The most important thing in his work," says an Israeli government official who declined to be identified further, "is to do it in a discreet way." Palestinian Cabinet minister Ghassan Khatib says that Wolf must hold Israel's feet to the fire, but "maybe not publicly at first."

Since his appointment was announced in early June, at about the time Mr. Bush brought Mr. Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas together for a summit in Jordan, Wolf has concentrated on bringing the two sides together.

According to one Western diplomat in the region familiar with the negotiations, Wolf can take partial credit for engineering the Israeli withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem, where the Palestinians have resumed control over security and undertaken to prevent attacks against Israel.

"The ball is rolling now, and I think that Wolf - with the backing of [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice - has really helped," this diplomat says, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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