WASHINGTON – The Democratic and Republican chiefs of the bipartisan September 11 commission made a last-minute urgent plea for Congress to resolve its differences and pass comprehensive reforms of the government’s intelligence agencies.

“We are at a crossroads,” a joint statement released yesterday from the commission’s chairman and vice chairman said. “It has now been more than three months since we presented our recommendations to the American people. At the time, we noted that if the government does not act on our recommendations and if there were another attack, the American people would quickly fix responsibility for failure. There is very little time left in this Congress to act.”

A week before Americans take to the polls, the bipartisan commission charged with reviewing the attacks of September 11, 2001, and making recommendations to prevent such an attack from happening again, are concerned that the political will to restructure the intelligence community will be lost if legislators do not resolve differences between the House and Senate intelligence bills now in conference.

At issue between the House and Senate versions are the powers of a new national intelligence director. The Senate bill, sponsored by Senator Collins, a Republican from Maine, and Senator Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, gives the director broad powers to not only make the budgets for the intelligence community but also to direct funding during the budget cycle to intelligence priorities. The House bill would require the national intelligence director to submit the budget priorities of the individual agencies. Another key difference between the two proposals is that the House bill would create stricter immigration requirements and give more powers to federal law enforcement. The September 11 commission has said it would rather the House proposals be left off an intelligence reform bill.

“We think the Senate language with regard to the powers of the national intelligence director are preferable and are closer to what the commission recommended,” said Lee Hamilton, a former congressman and vice chairman of the commission. The chairman of the commission, a former New Jersey governor, Thomas Kean, said he had information that the conferees were narrowing their differences.

Mr. Collins met in Bangor, Maine, with House Speaker Hastert and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, to discuss the differences in the two reform proposals. The Associated Press quoted Mr. Collins as saying, “Many significant issues remain to be resolved, but we will continue working toward an agreement.”

The families that have closely worked with commission released a statement yesterday saying the measure was “on the brink of failure.” On Friday, the commission wrote a letter to the White House asking President Bush to take time off from his campaign schedule to pressure Republican members of the House to support the Senate bill.

A member of that group, Kristin Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center attack, has appeared in a campaign advertisement for Senator Kerry.

The Democratic vice chairman of the September 11 commission, however, said he did not think the White House was to blame for the holdup in Congress. “We think the White House is making a very strong effort to resolve these differences,” Mr. Hamilton said. “We appreciate that. But in the end, of course, we judge these matters not by effort but by outcome.”