WASHINGTON: The long-awaited Middle East “roadmap” for peace faced a stiff resistance on Thursday, only a day after it was formally delivered to Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

In the United States, it opposed by pro-Israeli lobbies and US lawmakers who say it is tilted against Israel.

In the Middle East, both Palestinian and Jewish hardliners oppose it.

While the new Palestinian government welcomed the peace plan, the Israeli government is already reluctant to accept.

Shortly after the plan was delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters Israel had reservations about it, including the question of who would take the first step, Israel or the Palestinians.

The plan was also handed to newly elected Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, more widely known as Abu Mazen in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority’s minister for external affairs, Nabil Shaath later told reporters the Palestinians were completely committed, and provided the Israelis implemented their part, the Palestinians “would certainly implement the part that is related to the Palestinian side.”

The roadmap envisions a Palestinian state by 2005. But analysts maintain that two key parallel requirements are going to be major sticking points: a rollback in Israeli settlements and halting the suicide bombings by Palestinian extremists that have caused such anguish on the Israeli side.

In a message released with the roadmap, US President George W. Bush urged Israelis and Palestinians to accept this plan as “a framework for progress toward lasting peace and security in the Middle East.”

But his Israeli allies, more than his Palestinian non-allies, appeared to grab what Mr Bush described as “an opportunity to move forward.”

Palestinian militant groups, such as the Hamas, rejected the proposed roadmap because they said it aimed at giving away Palestinian lands to Israelis.

Israeli opponents rejected the proposal to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Some of them also refused to accept a separate Palestinian state, even with security guarantees for Israel and its citizens.

Inside the United States, so-called Middle East doves, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, strongly support the plan. But it is not popular on Capitol Hill where many US lawmakers see it as tilted against Israel.

The roadmap also enjoys the support of many European leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had agreed to participate in the Iraq war on the condition that the United States will unveil the roadmap.

Soon after the delivery of the peace plan, Mr Powell conferred by telephone with Israel’s Sharon and the Palestinian’s Abu Mazen.

Mr Powell is also scheduled to visit the Middle East later this month for follow up talks with Sharon and Abu Mazen, to spur them to implement the roadmap.

The Israelis, the spokesman said, regarded the roadmap as a basis for discussion on how the peace effort should proceed. They are unhappy with the proposal of parallel action. In the first phase the roadmap focuses on ending violence and building confidence between the two sides.

The Israelis want the Palestinians to end the uprising before Israel begins to meet its own obligations.

Israeli officials have expressed concern that they would be pressured to meet their commitments because “the time table says so” even if the Palestinians haven’t completed their side of the deal.

A performance-based timetable would give Mr Sharon more leverage to manoeuvre should he find flaws in the Palestinian implementation.

One large sticking point concerns the Palestinian insistence on a “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees to the homes they left in the 1948 war. Israel says this would tilt the population overwhelmingly in favour of the Palestinians.

Officially, the Israelis want the issue brought forward from its place in the roadmap timetable, and discussed early. Israeli hardliners would prefer it not to be discussed at all.

The roadmap seeks to bypass negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the two sides have lost all faith in each other, the roadmap sponsors are seeking to have both sides take independent, simultaneous actions that will achieve their own goals.