At the end of the hourlong news conference, Mr. Bush acknowledged that his remarks represented "a pretty somber assessment."

Mr. Barak's somber assessment did not square at all with the uncharacteristically upbeat one offered by a senior Palestinian negotiator this afternoon.

So a recent two-day public meeting of a music advisory panel here, with its somber assessment of the musical scene, had a resonant significance.

General Pace added his voice to General Abizaid's somber assessment of the increasing sectarian violence, in an exchange with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Mr. Yeltsin, back from a two-week vacation, gave a somber, even defensive assessment of his economic reforms.

Somber Assessment In their announcement yesterday, Nynex provided a somber assessment of the electronic information business.

And at the same time, there's been a much more somber assessment in private, as with Secretary Rumsfeld's memo.

The report offers a somber assessment of loans that had helped millions of Americans with blemished credit attain homeownership.

All this provided a fair amount of entertainment and helped leaven a meeting that was otherwise filled with somber assessments of the recent election that saw Republicans swept out of power in Congress.

The Venice summit meeting ended with the leading non-Communist industrial nations providing a somber assessment of the world economy and a series of generalized proposals to deal with persistent problems.