A recent spate of violence threatens to derail a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in the Middle East.

GWEN IFILL: So what role should the U.S. play in brokering a Middle East peace?

For more on the Powell trip and what comes next, we turn to Geoffrey Kemp-- he was the special assistant to the President and senior director for near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration; he is now director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center, a research organization. Robert Malley served on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration as special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs. He is now a senior advisor at the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. Welcome, gentlemen.

Geoffrey Kemp, what did you make of the Powell trip? Was it a good trip?

GEOFFREY KEMP: It was a necessary trip. It was not good because we're on the verge of war, and therefore, talk about Powell brokering a peace process is just meaningless at this point in time. What the secretary had to do was to go out there, to reinforce the essential ingredient of the American message; that is to say, there must be a ceasefire before there can be any progress towards resuming negotiations. Of course, he has another agenda: The Middle East is more than just the Arab-Israeli conflict. We have a potential crisis with Iraq. The Russians are about to veto an American proposal in New York to modify the sanctions regime. The Iranians are thumbing their noses at us by doing a deal with the Europeans to build more oil cooperation.

GWEN IFILL: Why did he have to do this? Why did the secretary of state, someone of his stature, have to go to broker a ceasefire, which doesn't appear to be working?

GEOFFREY KEMP: This is the dilemma the administration finds itself in when it doesn't have a senior official like Dennis Ross whose job 24 hours a day is to do this sort of peace brokering. Only Powell, yes, George Tenet could go out but he has a rather narrow mandate as the director of the CIA. The assistant secretary, William Burns, doesn't have the stature and clout of the Secretary of State. There's no way the President is going to get involved in this at this point in time. So really Powell's caught in a dilemma that until he appoints or the President appoints someone with real stature and authority, someone like George Mitchell perhaps, he's going to have to do the heavy work himself.

GWEN IFILL: How about that, Robert Malley? Is Colin Powell caught in a dilemma trying to go to the Middle East and find some sort of middle ground on this?

ROBERT MALLEY: I don't think the issue is so much who went. It could have been Powell, Bill Burns the Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs. I think the real issue is what the Americans went to do. They're caught in the sort of in the dilemma of the one hand not wanting to be too involved. The parties take the initial steps. They don't want to be the ones to take those steps. On the other hand, they feel that if they're not involved the violence may escalate. They come in and give a plan, which isn't really a plan because there's nothing attached to it. It just says seven days of quiet, six weeks of cooling off period.

What you need at this point is either to simply say to the parties the responsibility is yours -- you have to live up to your commitments. That's one route to take, which is a risky one. The other one is to go in and to say these are the steps you're going to have to take. We're going to hold your hand and force you to abide by those commitments. We're going to be with you all the way. That could be Powell, that could be Bill Burns; that could be somebody else. The issue is what America is going to do not who is going to do it.

GWEN IFILL: You're saying the U.S. isn't being tough enough?

ROBERT MALLEY: Oh, it's not a matter of tough enough. It's how involved are they going to be in the details, putting a plan on the table that is more than a time line which is a skeleton. You need a time line attached with specific commitments both parties have to meet and see if they're going to hold to them. There's no guarantee that it will succeed, by the way, which is why the administration understandably is hesitant.

GWEN IFILL: So how does the United States convince either side in this, this stand-off that they have something to gain from a ceasefire?

GEOFFREY KEMP: Well, what we have to gain from a ceasefire, of course, is that the United States will remain involved, will remain cooperative, will do everything it can to facilitate coming together for final status discussions, which were broken off last summer when the Camp David Accords failed under Bill Clinton. The Palestinians and the Israelis know that without a direct American involvement, they cannot do it themselves. The Europeans can't do it; the United Nations can't do it; the Arab League cannot do it. Only the United States has the influence and the strength with both parties to bring them together, but quite frankly, this is pie in the sky until you have a ceasefire and the violence has stopped to a minimum.

GWEN IFILL: So this initial idea that the President had of not being as involved as hands on in the Middle East as the Clinton administration was, that was always, what, poorly founded?

GEOFFREY KEMP: Well it was unrealistic. I think one can understand why George Bush didn't want to become as involved as Bill Clinton, and he should not because he's not yet up to speed on the substance, but it was inevitable that from the very beginning that the secretary of state was going to have to play a key heavy role particularly since they have no special envoy like Dennis Ross. Powell is very good at this. Powell has prestige. Powell has clout. It's much more important when Powell says something to Arafat and Sharon than when an assistant secretary does.

GWEN IFILL: Both sides seem to be asking for things that they know the other side will not be able to accomplish. Ariel Sharon was saying I want seven days of complete, absolute quiet, which he had to know was unlikely to happen. And Yasser Arafat is saying I want international monitors to come in and monitor the peace. How do you get past that? How does the U.S. force them past that?

ROBERT MALLEY: One thing you do is don't look at it strictly as a security affair. In this one I think I disagree slightly with Geoffrey Kemp. We're not talking about simply a conflict between two nations. We're talking about a political conflict, an occupation, a war that the Palestinians are waging in their eyes for national liberation. So you need to integrate political and security components, which would integrate many of the issues that you just raised. You have to do that and if you're just going to say we're going to concentrate on trying to get a ceasefire it's never going to happen. Therefore as you say the bar that has been put by Prime Minister Sharon is one that the Palestinians will never reach.

GWEN IFILL: Powell going to the Middle East and saying first let's take this baby step and get a ceasefire to hold that was never going to be enough.

ROBERT MALLEY: Well, I don't think it's enough standing on its own. I just cannot stand because it's, as I say, it's a political process from a Palestinian perspective. If you want to take the Israeli perspective it's a security issue. From the Palestinian perspective it's a political struggle they've been waging now for decades now and which right now they want to see translate into certain achievements.

GWEN IFILL: Want to respond to that.

GEOFFREY KEMP: Yes, and I think there is a willingness on part of most Israelis to do some further negotiation with the Palestinians, but not under the gun. Therefore, I think the Israeli insistence that there has to be a genuine ceasefire before you can discuss the political ramifications which I quite agree are what it's all about in the long run, I think that is a view that is shared by this administration. I think it's a view that is shared incidentally by quite a lot of our European allies, that you cannot negotiate under the gun. And the problem is that even if Arafat knows that, he does not have the power at this point in time to deliver on that issue in part because he can't show his people any political progress. So it's a chicken and egg issue. Arafat does have to clearly show something but it's he's not going to get the chance to show it unless the guns stop.

GWEN IFILL: You talk about being able to demonstrate that any kind of political progress has been made. Colin Powell said we can't come up with a new plan every two weeks yet there's some question about what it is this administration so far in its new engagement has accomplished. Has anything been accomplished?

GEOFFREY KEMP: Well, I think if you read carefully what the Secretary has said, I mean, he's endorsed the Mitchell plan. The Mitchell plan is actually quite creative in some ways because it would put the United States in a position of supporting a total freeze on Israeli settlements after this cooling-off period during the confidence-building period. That would be a break, a new breakthrough. It's something the Palestinians would welcome. It's something most of our Arab friends would welcome. So there have been some potential achievements but we can't get anywhere as long as the shooting continues.

GWEN IFILL: Is the United States controlling events or are events controlling us as we try to find a middle ground in this?

ROBERT MALLEY: I think at this point the tempo is very much being set by the parties. What happens is each time the administration takes a view that it doesn't want to be too engaged something happens in the region and it has to send a higher gun. I think what has to happen is for the United States to be more in charge, again unless they want to choose the option of saying both sides are to blame and we're going to step back until they're ready, which is an option that Secretary James Baker chose under the first Bush administration.

GWEN IFILL: Does Arafat, for instance, have the power to do the sorts of things we're asking him to do to actually control the violence which is happening from the Palestinian side?

ROBERT MALLEY: He can do a lot. He can do more than he's done. I think there's, if you want to put a percentage, 75-80% of the violence that he can control. But there is a residue of violence that he can't control, A) without the political ingredients that I spoke about in any event and, B) that are absolutely without his control, whether we are talking about Hamas or the Islamic Jihad. For him to take the steps to actually take the action against them then he really needs a political process because it's going to be a very bitter dispute if he tries to jail members of these two organizations.

GWEN IFILL: Flip side of that question. Does Sharon have the will power to follow through on some of the things that the Mitchell report suggests?

GEOFFREY KEMP: Well, Sharon is in something of a dilemma because he's discovering that being a prime minister, courting the world press, courting George Bush and the Europeans requires that he be statesman-like, that he be cautious in his reactions. He's got a right wing particularly in the settler community that is livid with him at this point in time who want to unleash the old Sharon and go in and really be tough on the Palestinians. So far Sharon is verging on the side of restraint. He's had two meetings with George Bush in the Oval Office. Yasser Arafat has had none. That perhaps says it all. Sharon knows that the moment he really escalates violence against the Palestinians because of another bombing or something like that, then all this good will could easily be shattered overnight. I don't think he wants to get to that point.

GWEN IFILL: At what point does it become wise for the United States to invite Yasser Arafat to the White House.

ROBERT MALLEY: I think we shouldn't make too much of it as a carrot or as a stick of not inviting him. He's the person you have to deal with because as I said he has more control over the Palestinians than anyone else. If you want to deal with the Palestinians, you have to deal with him. At some point President Bush has to meet with him. President Bush has his own reasons for not wanting to do it. It would be a mistake to overestimate how much leverage the prospect of a visit actually has.

GWEN IFILL: Does it give Arafat domestic political leverage, the prospect of a visit?

GEOFFREY KEMP: I think it's seen right now not just by the Palestinian but our Arab friends as a snub, a very deliberate snub by an administration incidentally that most Arab, Arab leaders in the Middle East thought would be more favorably disposed towards them than Bill Clinton who they saw as very, very pro Israel. So there's been a real shattering of illusions about the Bush administration. At some point I think a meeting with Bush will be inevitable if there is a ceasefire and if there is progress. But I don't think that's coming any time soon.

GWEN IFILL: Geoffrey Kemp, Robert Malley, thank you both very much.