Brussels, Belgium ? European governments gave a guarded welcome Tuesday to U.S. President George W. Bush’s speech on the Middle East, but did not endorse his call for a change at the top of the Palestine leadership.

“We will not demand that Arafat or any other leader in the region is removed,” said Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who takes over the chairmanship of the European Union on July 1.

Italian Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantica said Bush’s statement risks opening a rift between Europe and the United States on Middle East policy.

“We Italians have reaffirmed that Arafat is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and that only the Palestinians can choose their representative,” Mantica said on Italian state radio.

Other European leaders echoed that view.

“The Palestinian people alone must decide on its legitimate leadership,” said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said the EU was ready – once again – to help organize elections that would give the Palestinians “an opportunity to choose their leaders.”

The EU played a leading role in funding and monitoring the last elections in 1996.

While European diplomats said that the EU continues to regard Arafat as the legitimate Palestinian leader, the Europeans have cooled toward him as suicide bombings against Israelis have continued unabated.

“I have the same opinion as the U.S president that Arafat has not done what he could do and should have done to stop the violence,” said Denmark’s Fogh Rasmussen.

“Bush’s remarks regarding Arafat represent nothing new. If anything they come too late,” Gustavo Selva, the head of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Italian Parliament’s lower-house Chamber of Deputies, was quoted as saying by the Ap.Biscom news agency.

“It is already obvious to everyone that one cannot trust promises made by Arafat – someone who has spent too many words but has delivered very few facts on terrorism,” he added.

Bush’s speech Monday had been long awaited by European diplomats looking for a U.S. initiative to revive peace efforts.

Governments generally welcomed the speech as representing a new American engagement to ending the violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

They expressed support for Bush’s backing of the creation of a Palestinian state, his goal of achieving a final peace deal within three years, calls for reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and an Israeli withdraw from Palestinian territory.

But they did not endorse his demand for a “new and different” Palestinian leadership.

“I think it’s positive that he is so strongly confirming the idea of a Palestinian state,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. “But I can’t support the idea of having as a condition that Arafat will leave as the leader of the Palestinians.”

Russia also had praise for Bush’s speech.

“This initiative shows that the United States wants to actively promote normalization of the situation in the region,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Yakovenko was quoted telling the Interfax news agency in Moscow.

Ahead of Bush’s speech Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin had said Arafat must do more to end Palestinian terrorist attacks. But Putin told a news conference it would be “dangerous and mistaken to remove him from the political arena,” warning such a move risked a “radicalization of the Palestinian people.”

Europeans were also disappointed that Bush did not mention plans for an early Middle East peace conference that would bring together Israelis and Palestinians along with the United States, EU, Russia, United Nations and Arab nations.

“An early international conference … is more than ever necessary,” Solana insisted.

Putin and Western Europeans are expected to discuss the Middle East with Bush at the G-8 summit that starts Wednesday in the Canadian Rocky Mountain resort of Kananaskis.

Solana said he welcomed the U.S. “engagement” in the Middle East outlined in Bush’s speech and he emphasized points in common between the EU and Washington.

“We share the same fundamental objective, the perspective of two states living side by side in peace and security,” he said in a statement.

“And we agree on two basic conditions to reach that objective: an end to terrorism and an end to occupation.”