This trip is Mr. Baker's first diplomatic foray to the Middle East since becoming Secretary of State.

If the conference flops, the U.S. can always go back to selling more arms and making occasional diplomatic forays, and regional leaders to hating and killing.

Their diplomatic foray through Latin America late last year brought evidence that sympathy for armed insurgencies has disappeared.

Down on the planet's surface, his fellow Primero, Xavier Harkonnen, was attempting yet another diplomatic foray with Zenshüte elders, the leaders of a primitive Buddislamic sect.

Which makes our diplomatic foray of critical importance.

On talk shows, at military briefings and in diplomatic forays, he has come across as cool and capable; in the field in Saudi Arabia, he is a photogenic urban cowboy, wearing boots, a blue work shirt and jeans.

Hours before the Passover massacre in Netanya, President Bush could assert that the latest diplomatic foray by Gen. Anthony Zinni was "making very good progress" with little worry that any Democratic leader would challenge him.

Leaving his legions in camp, Caesar had made various diplomatic forays to try to reestablish alliances with the Aeduan princes, but he had been heartily rebuffed.

Two years later he made a diplomatic foray when he sent offerings to the Rasulid Sultan al-Ashraf Isma'il I in Zabid.

It turned out that Mr. Rumsfeld was spending last weekend in Europe, on a diplomatic foray, not kicking back and recounting stories about his exploits on the Dillon mats as a 157-pound Tiger a half-century before.