This seems unfortunate:

President Bush held a private 30-minute meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Palestinian officials last week, officials confirmed yesterday. The impetus for the rare session was presidential confidante and undersecretary of state Karen Hughes, who had received an earful of complaints about the administration’s Palestinian policy during a just-completed tour of the Middle East.
Hughes, who is charged with burnishing the U.S. image, mentioned the Palestinian officials during a lunch with Bush last Wednesday, noting that they were in town preparing for the White House visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Oct. 20. It is a measure of Hughes’s stature and direct access that a diplomat at her level can command a lunch with the president — and also attract the attendance of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.
Within minutes, the flabbergasted Palestinian officials — who had expected to meet only with an assistant secretary of state at Foggy Bottom — were told to come to the White House and meet the president. “I was absolutely surprised,” said Diana Buttu, a legal adviser to Abbas. “They said, ‘The president wants to see you,’ and I said, ‘The president of what?’ “…