After years of setbacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out this week to make one more push toward Middle East peace on behalf of an administration that has less than 18 months left in office. She got some polite nibbles, but not yet the big bite needed to ensure that President Bush's call last month for an international meeting of the region's major players will yield substance.

Many Arab governments want a full-blown conference that produces a broad and specific agreement, while the administration has talked instead of a meeting to explore options and ideas. The basic problem is one that has plagued the peace process for years: the wide gap on issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- and the tough negotiations required to resolve them.

After her talks Thursday with the Palestinian leadership on the last leg of her four-day trip, Rice addressed growing concerns among Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world that yet another U.S. effort will not get off the ground or will fizzle once the parties get together. She tried to assure all sides that any meeting would be "substantive and meaningful" and advance a two-state solution resulting in a Palestinian state. Bush "has no desire to call people together for a photo op," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

En route back to Washington, America's top diplomat conceded that "we haven't given much thought to how" the meeting will look and said preliminary diplomacy will require at least two more trips to the region. The tentative plan is to hold the meeting in November, U.S. officials say.

"I didn't issue invitations, but I was really pretty encouraged by the interest in it, by the willingness to discuss it, by the open-mindedness about the states that might attend," she told reporters traveling with her. The presence of countries that have not made peace with Israel -- notably Saudi Arabia, author of an Arab League regional peace proposal -- is vital to the credibility of any conference.

"We're going to try. All you can do is take advantage of an opening, and I think there is an opening," Rice said. People in Israel and elsewhere in the region see Abbas's government as one "which is serious, which is professional, which is focused on delivering security for people on the ground," she said.

Rice said the U.S. goal is to weave together several elements in the peace effort. These include new bilateral talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who are scheduled to meet Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho; special envoy Tony Blair's work to build up the Palestinian capacity to govern; and the wider regional diplomacy with eight U.S. allies in the Arab world -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The latest U.S. effort, often referred to as the "West Bank first" strategy, seeks to exploit the political split between the two main Palestinian factions. The armed Islamic movement Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, seized full control of the Gaza Strip this June, ending a power-sharing arrangement with the rival Fatah faction. Abbas, a Fatah leader, then formed his own government in the West Bank. The United States is seeking to aid Abbas, strengthen his security forces and foster peace talks with Israel that will eventually win popular support and isolate Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel.

But in its current regional approach to peace, the Bush administration is effectively sidelining a policy shift Rice heralded in 2005: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region . . . and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This week, the administration announced its largest arms sale package, worth at least $20 billion, to Saudi Arabia and five Persian Gulf sheikdoms, offering some of the Middle East's most undemocratic governments more muscle and a greater sense of security, to win support for U.S. goals.

On her last stops in Israel and the West Bank, Rice's mission met with skepticism. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in an interview that Bush's July 16 initiative could backfire if the U.S.-orchestrated meeting is "only a verbal, feel-good exercise."

"There's a real sense that it may be too little, too late," she said. "As usual, American presidents leave it to the end of their term to deal with the Palestinian crisis for the legacy of an outgoing president."

The Israeli press cast doubt on whether the traditional Arab players even represent the real powers anymore.

"Iran has all but completed a hostile takeover of the anti-Israel camp, which now consists mainly of Tehran's proxies and allies -- Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda," the Jerusalem Post editorialized Thursday.