ROME, May 28: The Bush administration is debating whether to depart from its policy and set a timetable for negotiating a Middle East peace settlement, US officials said on Tuesday.

As President George W. Bush condemned a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel that killed an 18-month-old girl and her grandmother, senior aides sought a way to set Israelis and Palestinians on a road to peace.

Setting a negotiating timetable for Israel and the Palestinian Authority would be a shift in policy for Bush who has said in the past that this was up to the sides to the conflict.

“We are not at this point prepared to table an American plan with specific deadlines,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Rome on Tuesday.

But one official travelling with Bush in Italy said: “We’re in consultation with friends and allies.

“We’re talking about how to chart the way forward and when we have something to say publicly, we will. The idea is, at some point, to lay out how we move forward.”

The Bush administration schedule could offer a timeframe for discussing the most contentious issues — Palestinian and Israeli borders, the status of Al Quds and what to do about Palestinian refugees — along the lines suggested by Arab leaders and others, another official said.

Former US president Bill Clinton personally immersed himself in the details of a potential peace settlement for the Middle East at the end of his term, but the talks broke down.

Israeli forces swept into the West Bank city of Jenin and arrested a senior militant after Monday evening’s suicide bombing at a cafe near Tel Aviv.

“We strongly deplore and condemn terrorist violence. There are people who don’t want peace and therefore they are willing to kill to make sure we don’t have peace,” Bush said on Tuesday.

Senior foreign policy aides are debating among themselves and US allies how to push towards a political settlement for the Middle East.

The “quartet” of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations have proposed an international conference, tentatively set for next month, to seek a political settlement.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah has proposed recognizing Israel’s right to exist and establishing diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the borders before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war.—Reuters