New York ? More than two years after leaving office, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will testify before the Sept. 11 commission next week in an appearance that could put him in the awkward position of criticizing fellow Republicans in the Bush administration just as he is seeking a more prominent role in the party.

For instance, Giuliani will probably be asked by the commissioners whether the city was aware that President Bush had reviewed an intelligence briefing a month before the attacks that said terrorists might be casing buildings in New York.

“His heroic status will give him a nice welcome and respect, but I see the commission as digging for all the truths they can,” said Douglas Muzzio, a public policy professor at Baruch College. “I don’t see them softballing him.”

He will appear before the panel on Wednesday, just a few miles from ground zero.

For most of his political career, Giuliani has been a maverick, breaking ranks with the Republican Party when he saw fit. But since the World Trade Center attack, he has become one of the party’s most dependable fund-raisers, relentless campaigners and vocal supporters of the Bush administration.

Observers say that Giuliani, 59, needs the party as much as the party needs him and cannot afford to alienate the GOP leadership with his testimony — if he is interested in running for office again, or winning the keynote speaker slot at the Republican National Convention this summer in New York, or perhaps getting a position in a second-term Bush Cabinet.

“The bottom line is he doesn’t want to burn bridges, either in his consulting work or as a future politician,” said Mike Paul, a political analyst and former Giuliani aide.

Giuliani has said he might get back into politics in 2006 with either a run for governor or for the Senate against Democratic incumbent Hillary Rodham Clinton. While battling prostate cancer, Giuliani dropped out of the 2000 Senate race won by the former first lady.

Giuliani declined to be interviewed for this article but told The Associated Press last month that he had not seen or heard any intelligence that could have prompted the government to react differently before Sept. 11.

“When a horrible thing happens, then you go back and — with the benefit of hindsight — you see something three or four months earlier that alerted you to it,” he said. “But, so far, I haven’t seen anything that would have created that kind of alert.”

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Giuliani became one of America’s most recognizable figures, hailed for his calm and resolute leadership. Since then, however, he has been largely absent from the political fray he once reveled in as New York’s cantankerous mayor.