After planning to shutter the US military's only site dedicated to the study of international peacekeeping, the Pentagon last week reversed its decision: the Peacekeeping Institute at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., will no longer close its doors at the end of the federal budget year.

The reversal symbolizes what appears to be a change of heart about an activity that since the early days of the Bush administration has been dismissed as largely peripheral to the core functions of the US military.

The new interest in postconflict stability relates in part to the pressing issue in Iraq - how to deal with a messier, deadlier, and more costly environment than anticipated.

Another factor: Liberia. The administration has spent weeks mulling the form of promised US involvement to quell civil conflict there. With the US inching toward some kind of lead role in a largely African international stabilization force - details could come as early as Monday, when President Bush meets with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan - the prototype of a new direction in American peacekeeping may be emerging.

This doesn't mean the reversal of a decade of reluctance to deploy peacekeeping forces. Far from it, analysts say. But factors ranging from Iraq and terrorism to US interests in a stable, globalizing world suggest that new Bush administration thinking about a once-dismissed topic will result in some new forms of American involvement in peacekeeping activities.

"They are clearly changing their thinking [about peacekeeping], and all depends on whether they want to make use of current institutions or not," says William Durch, an expert on peacekeeping at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

It was President Bush who told Americans before his election that he would not send US troops on stabilizing missions in far-flung places like Africa. Now, his assurance that the US will take part in peace efforts in Liberia is just one of the indications of the administration's growing interest in peacekeeping efforts.

The president, fresh from a five-day trip to Africa, is set to meet Secretary General Annan at the White House Monday. UN sources say the White House has also invited the UN's undersecretary for peacekeeping, suggesting that Bush, after days of deliberations on possible configurations for US involvement in Liberia, may be ready to make a decision.

Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested as much last week. He said a Liberia force would be "facilitated and supported in some way" by the US, "but letting others take the lead in the long-term work."

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has hinted more broadly at the hard thinking going on about peacekeeping. In a speech to defense industry representatives last month, he spoke of his interest "in the idea of our leading, or contributing to in some way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate in peacekeeping or peacemaking."

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