National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was asked at a White House briefing earlier this week about the president's Middle East trip, including to Saudi Arabia, and whether Bush will ask the Saudis to increase production and to get OPEC countries to do so.

"I am confident he will," Hadley said. "He has in the past."

In response, Anthony Cordesman believes, the Saudis may "do something, simply because it's good manners."

"But is this going to change the agreements being reached in OPEC? Is it going to be a major increase in the oil output from Saudi Arabia that somehow will affect world markets? That's very difficult to see," Cordesman said at a forum earlier this week at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Cordesman, who holds a chair at CSIS and has served in numerous overseas assignments for the US, is an old Middle East hand. It is not clear, he said, what incentives Saudi Arabia has to respond to the US with anything more than a "cosmetic solution that isn't going to have any meaningful impact on the global economy and global energy."

The US "can't deliver on peace, can't deliver on arms transfers, can't deliver on Iraq and we're raising problems in terms of Iran," Cordesman said. "And the reality is the market isn't being driven by the US. It's being driven by China, by India, and by rising Asian demand."

Jon Alterman, director of CSIS Middle East Program, said the US-Saudi discussions will turn to Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, and that the Saudis are questioning the "capacity, skill and trustworthiness [of the US] in fixing these problems."

The Saudis don't have an alternative "to keeping the US in its corner, but their confidence in the US is extremely shaken," Alterman said. "They'll be polite, but they're not going to really put themselves out to help the president."

He noted the assistance given the US by Middle East nations during the first Gulf War and that the reason there was no spike in oil prices "was because the Saudis pumped more oil."

But the relationship with Saudi Arabia "has been unalterably changed, partly by the events of 9/11, partly by what has happened in Iraq, partly by the Saudi sense that the US isn't as nearly as competent as they thought," Alterman said. "We're dealing with a very different reality."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with a ladle and pinioned him in his arm.

"That boy will be hung," said Mr. Limbkins. "I know that boy will be hung."