UNITED NATIONS — An Arab League initiative to launch a Turtle Bay-based effort to solve the decades long Israeli-Arab dispute is gaining steam despite a cool response from Washington and Jerusalem.

In Europe, several key powers have suggested an array of initiatives of their own, including a trip to the region by Prime Minister Blair and an Italian idea to use the soon-to-be deployed multinational force in Lebanon as a model for an international presence in Gaza.

But even some officials at Turtle Bay appear lukewarm about the Arab League initiative. “There is a split,” a U.N. official said yesterday when asked if Secretary-General Annan’s advisers would support the proposal.

The official, who requested anonymity, said that while some top advisers support the initiative, others are concerned about the lack of “enthusiasm” for it in Washington and Jerusalem.

Israeli and American officials said they would not comment before the Arab League presents its ideas publicly. Several diplomats said issues such as disarming Hezbollah would have to be resolved before new regional efforts are launched.

The Arab League’s drive began just days after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12, launching a new war. Arab leaders meeting in Cairo declared the American-led road map plan “dead” and said a new initiative on the Israeli-Arab dispute, based on what is known as the Saudi plan, was needed to replace it.

The idea was to convene a high-level meeting of world leaders. In recent days, the ambassador of Sudan, representing the Arab group at the United Nations, sent an official letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council calling for a meeting of Arab foreign ministers with the foreign ministers of countries represented on the council.

The U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, told the council about the new Arab League initiative on Monday. But he did not share details with them, several diplomats present at the closed-door council meeting said yesterday.

The Arabs are calling for a high-level meeting of foreign ministers “around the 20th of September” and plan “to discuss the settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute,” the Arab League observer at the United Nations, Yahya Mahmassani, told The New York Sun yesterday.

“The Quartet has not achieved the settlement, so we are looking for a new initiative,” he said, referring to America, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The Quartet is responsible for implementing the road map, a plan that envisions a new, independent Palestinian Arab democracy alongside Israel.

However, Mr. Mahmassani added that as of yesterday, the Arab group had not yet finished preparing a document detailing its new plan, to be presented next month. The document, now being developed, would be ready “in a couple of days,” he said.

“The road map has a value in terms of telling us what we need to do,” the British ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, told reporters yesterday. He added, however, “My boss always uses the phrase ‘we need to re-energize the process.'”

Mr. Blair said earlier this month that he is planning a September trip to the region.”We must never lose sight of the fact that the conflict in Lebanon arose out of a desire to exploit the continuing impasse in Palestine,” he said.

“The priorities are twofold,” Mr. Jones-Parry said. Besides implementing the Lebanon resolution, the council needs to “get back to the problems in Gaza and how we handle those issues. We can’t put those in abeyance.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece yesterday, the Italian foreign minister, Massimo D’Alema, wrote that recent French and Italian pledges to contribute thousands of troops to the new U.N.-led force in Lebanon have turned the European Union, which has played the role of a “payer” in the Israeli-Arab dispute, into a “player.”

Israel, he wrote, can now gain an “enhanced security through political agreements with its neighbors, guaranteed by the U.N. and by multinational forces.” That approach, he added, could be “possibly extended to the Gaza front.”

Israel has never shown enthusiasm for an international troop presence in territories that are under dispute with the Palestinian Arabs. One Jerusalem official said yesterday that the force in Lebanon would have to prove its viability first.

The Israeli official, who requested anonymity, also said that before grand new plans are launched, soldiers that were recently kidnapped must be released. On the Palestinian Arab front, he added, the Hamas-led government has yet to obey the Quartet’s demands that it recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and accept prior agreements.