Divisions Slow U.S. Push for Mideast Peace

WASHINGTON —  The Bush administration’s first major peace initiative in the Middle East appears to be foundering only weeks after it was launched.

Plans to halt the violence and inject new energy into peace efforts are now bogged down by sharp divisions both in Washington and in the region. The tensions have been accentuated by the renewal of Palestinian suicide bombings and attacks against Israeli targets, which have triggered fears that the situation could soon careen out of control again.

On Tuesday, three Israeli teenagers were killed at an Orthodox high school in the Jewish settlement of Itamar in the occupied West Bank by an infiltrator, who was later shot dead by the local security chief. An Israeli motorist near the Jewish settlement of Ofra also was killed, apparently by a Palestinian gunman.

The attacks coincided with new Israeli incursions into the West Bank in search of militants and with a suicide bombing at a cafe near Tel Aviv on Monday that killed two.

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are almost back to where they were before U.S. intervention last month led to a temporary lull in the violence.

President Bush, who returned from a weeklong European trip Tuesday night, will hold talks with his top national security team today. Administration officials say that issues to be discussed include whether to introduce specific U.S. proposals on both a timetable and the basic framework for restarting talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

The president expressed growing concern Tuesday about the escalating hostilities in the Middle East as he wrapped up his European trip with a stop in Rome. “We strongly deplore and condemn terrorist violence,” he said. “There are people who don’t want peace and therefore they are willing to kill to make sure we don’t have peace.”

Also Tuesday, his administration dispatched William Burns, the State Department’s top Mideast specialist, to the region and said CIA Director George J. Tenet is scheduled to go at week’s end.

Burns is expected to press the Palestinians on political reforms and to explore with both sides the terms for renewing political negotiations. Tenet is charged with reviving talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on security arrangements.

Yet U.S. officials acknowledge that plans to hold an international conference with all the major Mideast players as early as June are rapidly fading. The talk is now about a “summer conference.”

Within the administration, a complex situation has been made more difficult by splits over a kind of chicken-and-egg argument, U.S. officials say.

At the center of the debate is whether to base U.S. policy on “conflict resolution,” as the Palestinians and moderate Arabs insist, or “conflict management,” the approach preferred by the Israelis.

Under the conflict resolution model, the goal of resumed talks would be to push as fast as possible to settle the half-century-old Middle East conflict--an option the State Department now supports in principle.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also has accepted, albeit without great enthusiasm, the Arab argument that Yasser Arafat is the elected representative of the Palestinian people and thus the road to peace must include him, U.S. officials say.

Under the conflict management model favored by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the emphasis of talks would be on security issues aimed at curtailing violence. With support from Bush administration hawks, particularly in the Pentagon, he insists that no talks on a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute should begin until Israel’s security is guaranteed.

Sharon also believes that Arafat is not a suitable partner for peace and that no political talks should include him.

Sharon’s U.S. backers are now arguing that the Palestinian Authority must be thoroughly reformed--a prolonged process that would include restructuring it in a way that would take key decisions away from Arafat--before Israel should be pressed by Washington to enter talks, sources say.

Tenet, who has traveled several times to the Middle East on diplomatic missions, repeatedly tried to delay his departure because the basic aspects of this argument have not yet been sorted out, U.S. officials say. He will be a critical part of the White House talks today, administration sources say.

The halting pace of U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East was underscored by comments by Powell on Tuesday.

“When we get reports back from Mr. Tenet and Ambassador Burns and we consult with a lot of other people, we will start to integrate all this information and see what next steps should be taken,” he said at a news conference in Italy, where he was traveling with Bush.

So far, the administration is not prepared to put forward a plan with specific timetables, he added.

Burns and Tenet are expected to return with reports before Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak visits Washington late next week.

Some critics charge that Bush has not yet made the pivotal commitment required to get the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table.

“I don’t see an expression of political will in the White House to make this a top priority,” said Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s more conflict management than conflict resolution--a diplomatic effort to reduce the level of tension but not to put all the effort required to get a settlement.”

Wright reported from Washington and Wilkinson from Jerusalem.