Rice delays trip; envoy goes to Mideast

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a trip to Australia and Indonesia yesterday so that she could monitor the situation in the Middle East as US officials weighed the prospect of an Israel without Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Yesterday morning, Rice telephoned acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to say ''that the American people stand with the Israeli people in what we know is a difficult time and that our thoughts and prayers are with them," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Rice, who had been scheduled to depart today, also conveyed her hopes for Sharon's recovery, he said. But as Sharon lay in a hospital bed two days after suffering a massive stroke, doctors said he had only a slim chance of recovery and US officials and regional specialists began quietly discussing the future.

Sharon, who has been engineering a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, has been central to the Bush administration's plan to create a separate Palestinian state. State Department and White House officials said they were watching the situation and predicted the administration would not roll out any initiatives in the region until after the Israeli elections, which will be held March 28.

Routine consultations with Israelis were put on hold this week, as Elliott Abrams, the White House's key aide on the Mideast, and David Welch, assistant secretary of state, postponed plans to fly to Israel on Wednesday night.

But meetings with Palestinians continued. Major General Keith Dayton, President Bush's envoy on Palestinian security, arrived in the Mideast yesterday to talk about how to control the violence that is spreading across the Gaza and how to bring the situation under control in time for the Palestinian parliamentary election, slated for Jan. 25.

Both elections are critical to the future prospects for creating a Palestinian state, a key US foreign policy goal. Palestinians will choose between the fractured Fatah movement headed by Mahmoud Abbas, who has called for cooperation with Israel, and Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that continues to oppose the existence of the Jewish state. The parliamentary vote will also result in the selection of a new prime minister who will serve alongside Abbas.

M.J. Rosenberg, of the Israel Policy Forum, an American Jewish organization in New York, said by April Israelis and Palestinians will have new governments and ''That will be a great opportunity for the US to engage."

The Israeli election is expected to draw a range of candidates, but it is expected to pit Olmert, a key architect of the US-backed plan to unilaterally withdraw Jewish settlements from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned from Sharon's government to protest the Gaza pullout.

Netanyahu is campaigning on a promise not to cede more territory in the West Bank to Palestinians.

''Nobody can predict what the Israeli people will do," said one US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to show disrespect by predicting Sharon's demise. ''Will they say, 'Let's continue with Sharon's legacy' or will they say, 'Let's change course.' It's hypothetical. The Israeli populace will make this decision in March."

The Bush administration had heralded the Gaza pullout as a big step on the ''road map" to a separate Palestinian state that Bush hopes to see by the time he leaves office, but a Netanyahu victory would steer Israel away from such moves.

''It would be a huge setback, for the US and for the prospect of a reasonable solution to these problems," said Edward S. Walker Jr., former ambassador to Israel under President Clinton who now heads the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.

But even if Olmert or another of Sharon's close allies takes the helm, the Bush administration will be faced with additional foreign policy challenges. While Olmert is seen by many regional specialists as more flexible toward Palestinians than Sharon and perhaps even more willing than Sharon to cede territory to the Palestinians, he is also seen as less capable of pushing such a historic change through since he lacks Sharon's stature.

''Olmert is more committed to [disengagement] than Sharon was. He flat-out talks about the dangers of continuing occupation," Rosenberg said. ''The question is: does he have the standing to deliver?"