Jimmy and Bashar

The Presidential Palace sits on a hill overlooking Damascus, its dark glass windows gazing at the city like a blank computer monitor or an unblinking eye. I went up there today, ostensibly as part of the local press pool covering the visit by former American president Jimmy Carter, but really just to get a look at Syrian President Bahsar al Assad's layout.

Its impressive, as was no doubt intended. The walled complex is done is a crisp white International Style mixed with Arabesque motifs like a 60's era space station for the film version of 1001 Nights directed by Stanley Kubrick.

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Also as expected, we were hustled through the meeting of two presidents fater than I could think of the word for "cheese" in Arabic. All I caught of the discussion was a bit of Georgia drawl: "there are a lot of people in my country who would like to have that conversation."

Certainly Carter wasn't talking about the Bush Administration, which would rather that neither Carter nor anyone else talked to Syria, which the US accuses of supporting terrorism in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq. But Carter's visit today is just one example of how the effort to isolate Syria is failing.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus