Away from the donor scandal encircling British politics, 49 countries and organisations are meeting in Maryland in an attempt to re-invigorate the Middle-East peace process. Opinion on the significance of the conference varies.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post sees grounds for hope:

For starters, the document commits the parties to begin negotiations on a peace treaty "resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception." The text unfortunately doesn't specify what these unmentionables are, but negotiators understand that it does mean the two deal-breakers: Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The prayers of Israelis that they wouldn't have to talk about Jerusalem, and of Palestinians that they wouldn't have to discuss the right of return, have not been answered.

The most contentious passage was the last paragraph, which concluded that "implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States." The Israelis won an important concession here, in the understanding that a treaty won't happen unless there is security on the ground, as the road map mandates. But they gave up something important, too, in specifying that America will decide whether the road map conditions are being met.

The New York Times editorial also takes an optimistic line. Nonetheless, profound challenges remain, and as Gideon Rachman points out, the record of Middle East peace summits is almost uniformly one of failure.

Last time I visited Jerusalem, I sat down with a colleague and tried to see how many Middle East peace plans and conferences we could list. Within a couple of minutes we had scribbled down Venice, Madrid, Oslo, Camp David I, Camp David II, Taba, the Rogers plan, the Annan plan, the Reagan plan, the Tenet plan, the Saudi plan, the Mitchell report, the Geneva accord and the road map.

Nonetheless, with moderate arab states concerned about Iran's regional ambitions, and with President Bush desperate for a legacy in the Middle East which is not related to Iraq, could Annapolis offer a new hope?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in US politics, Karl Rove ludicrously claims that the Bush administration was rushed into war by the US Congress. For a full debunking of this outrageous re-writing of history, watch Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington here: 'The reason it was untold is because its untrue'.