WASHINGTON: Even after the Bush administration set the date and venue for last week’s long-awaited Middle East policy address by Secretary of State Colin Powell, officials remained unsure whether it would actually be delivered. The State Department held a second speech in reserve in case the White House did not give the final go-ahead.

Skeptics in the administration raised the same arguments they had mustered for months against deepening American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They asked why President Bush should commit to a venture with high odds of failure given the questionable credentials of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as peacemakers.

“Why saddle the president with a situation where nothing happens and he ends up with egg on his face?” said a diplomat, relating the thinking in the White House.

Now, as two senior US envoys depart for the Middle East at Powell’s direction, that risk could become immediately apparent. William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni face the daunting task of pressuring Sharon to retreat from his own public declarations and drop his insistence on seven days of total calm before peace talks can resume. And they will be demanding that Arafat buck his own public opinion and move more vigorously against Palestinian guerillas.

These disputes could come to a head quickly because the envoys are looking for progress ahead of Sharon’s scheduled visit to Washington in a week. They “are going to run into a buzz saw” with Sharon over his condition for seven days of quiet, said Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel. “He’ll be using this first set of meetings to see how hard the administration will push.”

In making final revisions to Powell’s speech, however, US officials had sought to improve the climate for talks by softening some elements that could have angered Israel. There was also a debate about whether to remove some specific policy positions from the State Department text out of concern these would insert the United States too deeply into the debate between Israelis and Palestinians, but most of the details emerged unscathed, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Bush’s domestic policy advisers and Pentagon officials, including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were wary of wading into the Middle East morass while Powell and his lieutenants at the State Department wanted to gamble.

“Some people around town, not in this building, argue it’s impossible as long as we have Arafat and Sharon in the chairs,” said a State Department official. “Obviously, we don’t feel that way.”

Some administration officials argued that it would be unwise to launch a new initiative since the timing could make it seem as if the United States was rewarding terrorism by offering a peace effort to counter Osama bin Laden’s appeal in the Muslim world. And after Bush last month said for the first time he supported the creation of a Palestinian state, some officials said that remark should suffice.

But as the Bush administration ramped up its military campaign against Osama, his Al Qaeda cadres and Taliban protectors, Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab countries redoubled their pressure for a new US peace initiative. These governments warned Washington that its standing in the Muslim world is low because of US reluctance to mediate a conflict that has cost hundreds of Palestinian lives at the hands of Israel, a close American ally.

Moreover, administration officials and Middle East analysts said the Sept 11 events strengthened the case for a new push by making it more likely Arafat and Sharon would seek to stay on the good side of an embattled America.

Powell’s words sought to restore hope among Israelis and Palestinians that peace is still attainable after 14 months of violence. But he refrained from detailing a new approach for enforcing a truce and restarting negotiations, urging instead that the two sides abide by the May recommendations of an international committee headed by former Senator George Mitchell, D-Maine.

The key, American officials said, will be crafting a package of measures based on the Mitchell report that offers Israelis immediate security while assuring Palestinians that their grievances will be addressed.

“It’s a matter of seeing security factors and political factors move ahead at the same time,” a State Department official said.

US and Israeli officials say they are encouraged by reports that Arafat’s deputies, chastened by the toll that the Palestinian uprising is taking, are increasingly pessimistic that it will translate into political advantages. Administration officials see the new diplomatic mission as offering Arafat political cover if he wishes to crack down on Palestinian militants, both within Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as in his own political movement.

Burns and Zinni will be pressing him to take such steps, in particular arresting suspected militants, disarming militias and ending incitement to violence, administration officials said.

At the same time, the envoys will have to offer Arafat an incentive by wringing some flexibility out of Sharon. They will be looking for the Israeli government to lift blockades of Palestinian areas, withdraw troops from Arab areas and order soldiers to act with greater restraint, officials said.

US officials are hoping Sharon’s upcoming visit offers some leverage. The Israeli leader had delayed his plans to come to the United States earlier this month in part because he wanted to avoid a public display of differences with the Bush administration, U.S. officials said. Administration officials, troubled that he had ordered Israeli troops into Palestinian cities following the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister, had considered denying him an invitation to the White House.

Despite Arab urging, Bush has so far been unwilling to meet Arafat, saying he must take further steps to control violence.

Though the Louisville speech included no new plan for breaking the Middle East logjam, the fact that Powell finally gave it puts down a marker that will make it more difficult for the administration to disengage once again, according to Middle East experts and diplomats.

“It gets us that much farther out there. The administration can’t hide from it. It’s exposed,” said Edward S. Walker Jr., a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. But he added, “It’s not too exposed.”

Yet within the administration, skeptics are saying that it is Powell who is exposed because even a politically savvy and tough-minded Marine like Zinni may prove unable to budge either Arafat or Sharon.

“A lot of people are saying Powell has gone out on a limb. ‘You have your speech. Let’s see what happens now,’ “ said a source familiar with administration discussions. —Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.