WASHINGTON – President Bush yesterday privately told his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, that while it was up to him as to whether terrorist groups could participate in upcoming municipal and parliamentary elections, America would have no contact with terrorists in his future government.

Mr. Abbas has announced that he will allow Hamas to participate in parliamentary elections scheduled for January 25, a point that has raised concerns for the Israelis and their supporters in Washington. A letter signed by the House leadership, minus House Speaker Hastert, yesterday told the Palestinian president that Congress would have reservations about aid for his government if it included representatives from Hamas.

The private message from Mr. Bush to Mr. Abbas was more pointed than their public exchange yesterday when he praised the Palestinian president for his commitment to “one authority, one law, and one gun,” in a Rose Garden ceremony commemorating the first visit from Mr. Abbas to Washington since Israel’s withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza.

A senior administration official yesterday described America’s policy toward the thorny question of Hamas’s participation in future Palestinian elections as follows: “Our position is they are a terrorist group and we will not meet with a terrorist group. But it is a decision for the Palestinian people as to who participates in their elections. We have made that quite clear.”

This formulation is almost identical to the White House policy on Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanese parliamentary elections, whereby American diplomats are instructed not to meet with Hezbollah ministers and legislators, but maintain cordial relations with the government in Beirut.

The issue is also emerging in other Middle Eastern countries as authoritarian states are beginning to explore ways to allow Islamist organizations to participate in local and legislative elections. Next month, members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will run for the parliament in Cairo as part of a reform coalition known as Kafiya. Israeli officials, however, argue that the situation in Egypt is not comparable with the one in Gaza because Hamas still maintains an armed wing devoted to killing Jewish civilians. What’s worse, because Hamas is seen as a political alternative to a government that has not been able to deliver basic services since the Gaza withdrawal, they could do very well in the upcoming elections.

“This is an episode in futility to get the Palestinians to meet their obligation,” a former executive director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Morris Amitay, said yesterday. “It now looks like Hamas will be permitted to participate in the upcoming elections.”

Mr. Abbas sought a commitment from President Bush to restart the peace process championed by President Clinton. But Mr. Bush, on this score, demurred. While the president called on both sides to live up to obligations set under the road map, an international plan that envisions stages Israelis and Palestinians must go through until final status talks over one state, Mr. Bush yesterday rejected any time table for negotiating the parameters of an independent Palestinian state.

In remarks that appeared aimed at his predecessor, Mr. Bush said, “One thing that will not happen is that we will try, the United States will try to conform and force parties to make decisions based upon the political schedule in America.That doesn’t make any sense. What matters is the decisions made by the Palestinians and the Israelis, and the confidence earned as we move forward.”The president went so far as to say that it was “not true” he intended to see a Palestinian state before he left office.

A scholar on the Middle East at the Hudson Institute here, Meyrav Wurmser, yesterday noted that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians got what they wanted out of Mr. Abbas’s trip to Washington.

“Israel is telling the Americans Abbas is weak, there is no one to talk to. They are saying he has no control. Because there is no one to talk to, they are saying, ‘We should do this unilaterally,'” Ms. Wurmser said. But she added, “Abbas’s goal is to basically place the blame on to Israel by saying ‘They are not giving us enough, not making enough concessions.’ He needs America to pressure Israel. He needs a new peace process. Neither side got what they wanted from the president.”