WASHINGTON: As the Bush administration moves into the next phase of its efforts to resolve the Mideast crisis, there is a potential stalemate between the White House and the Arab governments whose assistance and views it has warmly solicited, over how far, and in what direction, President Bush is prepared to go in leading the peace process.

The stalemate appears a virtual certainty when Israel’s stated views are taken into account, as they surely will be.

In a region where gamesmanship and political posturing are highly developed arts, and where history teaches that nothing is certain until after the fact, there may still be room for compromise. But with the situation on the ground worsening, many believe the faltering process will grind to a halt without a detailed roadmap from Washington.

Wednesday’s suicide bombing in Israel, which killed 17 people at a bus stop in the northern part of the country, illustrates the problem. The White House, which condemned the attack said it underscored the need to reform the Palestinian Authority security forces and “the importance of President Bush’s vision” of a Palestinian state living in peace beside its Israeli neighbour.

But Arab allies in the region say that refashioning security and every other institution in the future state of Palestine, while necessary and underway, will not stop the bombings or Palestinian popular support for them. The only thing that can do that, leaders in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan believe, is a tangible American plan to implement the statehood vision.

These leaders say that they believe Bush is working on such a plan, and that they are hopeful he will produce it — including a negotiating timeline and a date certain for establishing a Palestinian state — within the next several weeks. “I cannot say the decision has been firmly made yet,” said a senior Arab official who has participated in recent White House meetings on the subject, “but it is clearly moving, and rapidly, in that direction.”

The announcement of a Bush plan, said an official from another allied Arab nation, “absolutely” must come before convening an international conference on the Middle East, which the administration has said will be held this summer.

But the White House says it’s not sure what the Arabs are talking about. “I do not know where it is coming from that the US is going to table a plan,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters Wednesday on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s meeting with Bush this weekend. “If someone is saying that the US is about to lay down a detailed plan, let me just put it this way: I would like to know what it is.”

There are reports, however, including in the Israeli press, that such a plan has been formulated inside the State Department, but has not yet been sold to the White House.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is due to meet with Bush here, will tell the president that Israel will not agree to any arbitrary negotiating timeline or statehood date, or even to begin negotiations on any basis until a complete ceasefire has taken hold, according to Israeli press reports.

Sharon has called for a lengthy interim period during which negotiating parameters would be discussed, a scenario categorically rejected by the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. Sharon has also said he has no intention of negotiating with the current Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, whom his government holds responsible for the bombings.

The administration has tended to waffle on the issue of Arafat, denouncing him but then, when faced with the logical inference drawn from its denunciation, pulling back to say it still recognized him as the choice of the Palestinians.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post