Washington ? A Senate Republican offered President Bush a compromise Thursday in the standoff over the dismissals of federal prosecutors, suggesting that select lawmakers question Karl Rove and other administration officials in public, but not under oath.

White House counsel Fred Fielding promised to convey the offer to Bush, said Sen. Arlen Specter, who took the first step toward brokering a deal a few hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved but did not issue subpoenas for Rove and others.

Specter’s plan would grant one of Bush’s key demands – that the officials named in the subpoena authorization testify without being sworn. But the proposal dismisses other White House conditions by suggesting that Rove and the others testify in public.

Presidential press secretary Tony Snow again cast the administration’s offer to allow Rove and the others to talk to lawmakers in private as the best deal Democrats are going to get. “We opened with a compromise,” he told reporters.

Democrats also did not budge from their insistence that Rove be questioned publicly and under oath.

“I’ve had a lot of those unstructured briefings and found that I was given, in many instances, not the whole truth, nothing near the whole truth,” said the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

His committee, by voice vote Thursday, gave Leahy authority to issue subpoenas for Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.