WASHINGTON: The Bush administration strayed into the gray area between internal debate and public feuding this week, as competing interests angled for the ear of President George W. Bush on his next step in the Middle East.

Bush is preparing to speak, possibly next week, on a US vision for how to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, but analysts say the administration is far from decided on what it should do or even how much effort it should invest in the endeavour.

In the meantime, the president and his team have put out conflicting signals, confusing and dismaying Middle East diplomats who hang on every word they utter on the subject.

Robert Satloff, director of policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it reflected a “growing pattern of White House-State Department division on key Middle East issues, a damaging dynamic that will only be exercised through clarity and resolution from the Oval Office.”

Bush has at least three big decisions to make and each one could have profound implications for the image of the United States in Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds. Bush’s image among key domestic constituencies is also at stake.

The biggest choice is whether to set out detailed proposals for progress toward a Palestinian state. Bush adopted a two-state solution last year but has never said how or when Israel should end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

He also has to decide how far he should press for change in the Palestinian Authority and whether Israel and the United States must deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

And, in the near term, the United States has to flesh out its ideas on the aims and arrangements for a Middle East peace conference promised for the summer.

PROVISIONAL STATE: Analysts said on Thursday the internal debate was now heating up, with the administration roughly divided between State Department enthusiasts for engagement on one side, and a loose coalition of defence, intelligence and domestic political advisers urging caution on the other.

The debate appeared to flare into the open on Wednesday after an interview in which Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke positively about a proposal for a provisional Palestinian state to give the Palestinians hope for a better future.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer quickly dismissed the suggestion Bush had endorsed the idea, saying it was just one of the proposals the United States has heard in its recent consultations with Middle East leaders.

Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute and a former assistant secretary of state, said Powell may have been floating a trial balloon during an election year, to see how the idea goes down with influential US constituencies.

But Walker said he tended to the widely held view the Bush administration does not have a coherent policy.

“There is no doubt there’s a problem in the administration. They just don’t have their act together,” he said.

“I really think they are still contemplating (what to do about the Middle East). They have not decided,” said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.

CLOSER SCRUTINY: The “provisional state” proposal, raised by Powell in his interview with the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat, stands out from the others because it is one of the few ideas that could appeal to both Arabs and Israelis.

But the analysts said that on closer scrutiny it was hard to see how the United States could bridge the gap between the Israeli concept of indefinite interim arrangements for the Palestinian territories and the Arab view of a provisional state as one step along a prearranged path to full statehood.

Walker said that unless the state had substance, Palestinians would treat the proposal much as they treated the offer of autonomy after the Camp David accords in 1978.

“If they are talking about a state with no powers, we go back to the old days of trying to convince the Palestinians that autonomy was the best thing since sliced bread and they kept saying ‘Well, frankly, we’re not interested in being the garbage collectors,’” he added.

Telhami called the idea a “prescription for disaster” unless there was prior agreement on the next stage.

The usefulness of the proposed Middle East peace conference is also in doubt, given the gap between Arab expectations and the concept which Washington has offered so far.

The Arabs want a one-off conference that sets a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory, while Powell has said the meeting will be only the first of a series.

Walker said that, without US commitment to make a conference succeed, Powell would end up hosting a ministerial meeting of the “quartet”, the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United States, but without the parties.—Reuters