WASHINGTON - President Bush's new outline for Middle East peace provoked a host of puzzled questions from around the world yesterday, with leaders demanding that the United States provide a clearer direction for achieving Bush's vision of an independent Palestinian state.
One glaring question is how to produce democratic reforms by the Palestinians, even while Israeli forces are given license by Bush to occupy the West Bank.
Others involve the nature of Bush's proposed "provisional" Palestinian state and how the administration plans to launch a peace process that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within three years, as Bush suggested.
"A number of people want to see the details," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged in a radio interview yesterday. "How do we get there?"
Powell said he could not offer "a precise road map as to how you get there," and said he was unsure of his next move as the man tapped by Bush to lead the diplomatic effort.
Imposing heavy responsibility on the Palestinian people, Bush insisted that they replace Yasser Arafat as their leader. He urged Palestinians to elect a new leadership that is not tainted by terrorism.
In addition, the president demanded sweeping reforms that would make the Palestinian government accountable, dismantle terrorist groups and produce an independent judiciary. The United States, Bush indicated, would judge the results.
The president also spelled out a series of steps the Israeli government must take - though he imposed no conditions on the Israelis until the Palestinians start to halt their violence. These eventual steps include a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the release of Palestinian tax revenue and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to the positions they occupied before the current conflict broke out in September 2000.
Bush failed to spell out a clear sequence of Palestinian and Israel actions that he expected to see. Nor did he propose a timetable or any means to solve the most difficult problems blocking a final peace deal, including the status of Jerusalem, borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
With its demand that the Palestinians act first, the speech was widely seen as a victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, who has warned repeatedly that terrorism must be crushed before Israel can begin talking peace.
Nahum Barnea, an Israeli commentator, went so far as to suggest that Sharon could claim the copyright on Bush's speech.
Members of the left-leaning Labor Party criticized Bush's failure to offer specifics. "We know that things will change here only after a diplomatic process," said Matan Vilnai, a Labor Cabinet minister.
"Thinking Israelis," said Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, "are mindful that American tea and sympathy ... will not stop the next terrorist attack or promote the peace negotiations that most Israelis want to see."
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, said diplomats from the United States, Europe and Russia would have to figure out "how we implement the proposals put forward by the president."
Moderate Arab leaders, who made high-profile visits to lobby Bush before the speech, sought more answers.
"President [Hosni] Mubarak said that Bush's speech was well-balanced," said Hisham Nakib, an Egyptian spokesman in Washington. "We believe there are clarifications that we need to know that will explain to us the road map to the endgame."
Despite calls from the Arab world for Powell to return to the region to spell out the specifics of the president's program, the secretary of state has no plans to go there immediately.
European leaders called for Powell to revive his plans for an international Middle East conference this summer to map out future steps. But Powell indicated that the conference has been put on hold indefinitely.
The lack of a clear-cut plan or timetable in Bush's speech was deliberate, according to Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The president, Satloff suggested, is intent on seeing results from the Palestinians before they receive rewards.
Bush failed to explain how he expects America's Arab allies, none of which is truly democratic, to take the lead in coaxing Palestinian reforms.
To make the plan work, Powell will have to put more pressure on Israel to make concessions than Bush did in his speech Monday, said Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute and a former U.S. envoy to the region. "Palestinians won't be able to change if the [Israeli] military campaign continues," Walker said. "If what the president has in mind is to wait for the Palestinians, [the Bush plan] is DOA."