President George W. Bush’s dramatic plunge into Israeli-Palestinian peace-making has run into serious obstacles, stoking fresh support for more radical ways to deal with the worst Middle East crisis in decades.

These include unofficial calls for an international conference to authorise a US-led international force to implement a ceasefire and peace settlement and, alternatively, for an end to dealing with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Nearly a week after Bush put the United States at the centre of the Mideast conflict for the first time in his presidency and dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell on a peace mission to the region, results are disheartening.

A suicide bomber blew up a bus in northern Israel, killing eight travelers, hours after 13 Israeli soldiers died in an ambush in a Palestinian refugee camp.

Even before this, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was pushing on with his 12-day military offensive against Palestinian-ruled areas, in which at least 200 Palestinians have died, in defiance of Bush’s demand for withdrawal.

The new attacks were said to harden Sharon’s resolve.

Meanwhile, moderate Arab leaders and Palestinians have declined to embrace Bush’s plea for a public repudiation of, and a halt to, suicide bombing in a worsening cycle of violence that has significantly destroyed hopes for peace.

Part of the problem is a lack of faith in a still evolving approach to the Middle East by the Bush administration, which remained relatively uninvolved in its first year in power.

There is also a growing antipathy in Washington for Arafat and a growing conviction, advocated by Sharon and Bush, that the Palestinian leader cannot be trusted and cannot be considered a reliable negotiating partner in peace talks.

“There is no credible partner on the Palestinian side anymore. There is no way back for Arafat,” said Martin Indyk, former President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Israel.

“The whole idea that the secretary of state put out there again on Tuesday — of a ceasefire, Tenet, Mitchell, political negotiations — is not going to work,” he said in an interview.

He referred to a plan devised by CIA Director George Tenet last June to promote security cooperation so the two sides could begin implementing a plan by former US Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell for confidence-building measures that could pave the way for implementing the Oslo peace process.

Noting strong regional and international support for a two-state Israel-Palestine solution, Indyk suggested convening an international conference through which Arab nations become custodians in establishing a Palestinian “trusteeship” in advance of declaring a state.

An international body like the United Nations would be the administrator “but there would have to be a heavy US presence and a force that was enforcing order within the Palestinian state-in-the-making,” he said.

Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution analyst who worked for Clinton, endorsed a similar approach, saying “merely engaging at a higher level (as in Powell’s trip) will not be enough”.

“What the region needs is a bold new initiative that abandons the incrementalism of the past in favour of decisive action and commitments for the future,” he said. -- Reuters