UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 20 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel on Tuesday to allow Palestinians to carry out their legislative elections in January without Israeli interference, implicitly criticizing Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the U.N. on Tuesday.
During a visit to New York last week, Mr. Sharon said he would withhold cooperation with the Palestinian legislative elections if candidates from the militant group Hamas took part. Both he and Palestinian leaders said elections could not be held without Israeli cooperation.
"This is going to be a Palestinian process," Ms. Rice said after a meeting here to discuss the Middle East, "and I think we have to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process.
"We hope that the elections can go forward and that everyone will work to make those elections go forward."
Mr. Sharon's assertion puts the Bush administration in the awkward position of having to choose between its two most important foreign policy goals: fighting terrorism and spreading democracy in the Arab world. Ms. Rice met with representatives from the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, a group known as the quartet that is focused on settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The meeting was called with the idea that it would be used to congratulate Mr. Sharon for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and to discuss moving the Middle East peace effort forward. And while the officials did congratulate Israel, much of their final statement and individual remarks at a news conference afterward came in response to several provocative statements Mr. Sharon made last week.
American officials widely saw the statements as potential setbacks for the peace effort. Israeli officials seized upon one line in the quartet's final statement, saying it supported Mr. Sharon's position on the Palestinian elections.
"We also agreed that, ultimately, those who want to be part of the political process should not engage in armed group or militia activities," the statement said.
But a senior Bush administration official who is involved in the issue said, "The word 'ultimately' was chosen carefully." Israel should allow the election take place, he added, and the Palestinians ultimately should disarm Hamas. American officials seized on a different statement in Mr. Sharon's speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. Mr. Sharon said Israel would pursue the peace effort "in accordance with the sequence of the road map," as the peace plan that the United States and its allies proposed in 2003 is called.
But the day after Mr. Sharon gave that speech, he seemed to belie that pledge when he made a new pronouncement on West Bank settlements. He declared that Israel would not freeze growth in any of those settlements until the very end of the peace effort, years from now. The road map calls on Israel to freeze growth in the settlements as one of the first Israeli actions in its sequence of prescribed steps.
The Palestinians have still to take the first step outlined for them in the road map: ending violence and disarming militant groups. The quartet urged them "to maintain law and order and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has invited Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a similar group, to take part in the elections, saying participation in the political process could serve to moderate their behavior. Hamas is fielding candidates in the election, but there seems to be little evidence yet that the group has moderated its behavior.
In a speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, noted that "two days ago in Gaza, the terrorist organization Hamas held a rally of 10,000 armed men dedicated to a holy war against Israel."
Hamas has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest suicide bombings in Israel that have killed hundreds of civilians over the last few years, and its charter calls for the elimination of Israel.
With all these conflicts in the air, diplomats and American officials said they would wait before making any decisions about how to move forward. Later this month, Mr. Sharon's party, Likud, will hold a central committee meeting to determine whether it is time to choose a new leader. That could lead to new elections.
"There is a political development on the Israeli side," Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said during the quartet news conference, adding that "we are not sure whether it leads to elections or not," and "want to see that settled before one takes any other bold initiatives."
