The general secretary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization resumed on Wednesday his search for a compromise that could lead the alliance out of one of its worst crisis in its 53-year history.

Secretary General George Robertson of Britain, failed on Tuesday to bridge the serious breach created when Germany, France and Belgium refused to endorse a U.S. request that the alliance should begin planning to provide military support to Turkey if the United States launched a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein then attacked his northern neighbor.

Robertson canceled a scheduled meeting on the matter at the last minute on Tuesday to clear the way for informal discussions, according to the Reuters news agency. The 19 NATO ambassadors then discussed the dispute for a short time Tuesday evening before going home.

Robertson's latest tactic is said to be the reduction of the request to its bare essentials -- the protection of Turkey in the case of an Iraqi attack. "This could produce a breakthrough," one source told Reuters.

In the original request, the United States asked the alliance to begin plans to provide Turkey with three forms of support: Airborne warning and control system aircraft (AWACS) to provide surveillance, Patriot missiles to provide air defense, and special forces to combat biological and chemical weapons.

Officials expect standoff to continue

Before Robertson made his latest push, sources in Brussels said they did not expect the dispute to be solved immediately. Instead, they said France, in particular, wanted to wait until U.N. weapons inspectors made their second report to the Security Council on Friday.

The veto is one of several steps that Germany, France and other European countries have taken to block a U.S. war on Iraq. Hours after the vetoes were filed on Monday, French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin said their countries and Germany would launch an effort in the U.N. Security Council called "alternative to war." Their key demand is to increase the number of weapons inspectors in Iraq and their technical capabilities.

U.S. expresses dismay

The conflict has left an ugly bruise on the alliance, which operates on the principle of 'all-for-one, one-for-all.' The United States, which steered NATO through four decades of Cold War against the Soviet Union, was particularly upset by the veto.

"NATO is facing a serious crisis," said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. "The core fabric of our alliance is that when one ally is in trouble we all come to its assistance. ... All NATO allies must meet that commitment."

And President Bush said in Washington: "It affects the alliance in a negative way when you are not able to make a statement of mutual defense."

Members of Germany's opposition parties also attacked Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for the decision. "They have to go, no matter in what fashion, as long as it is democratic," said Michael Glos, of the Christian Social Union, the sister party to Germany's biggest opposition group, the Christian Democratic Union.

Germans question U.S. motives

But Germany, a long-time beneficiary of U.S. support and the most outspoken critic of America's potential war on Iraq, raised doubts about the Americans' reasons for wanting NATO to begin the planning phase. The request is simply a signal "that NATO stands behind a mission that we don't think is justified at the moment," a source in Berlin told the Associated Press.

Schröder also picked up the support of his Social Democratic parliamentary group. The group's leader, Franz Müntefering, said: "I think it is proper for a sovereign country to take a position in such a situation and then seek support for it."

"Logic of war"

The United States made the request in mid-January. Robertson was unable to achieve consensus on the matter in informal talks last week. The resistance culminated on Monday in the vetoes by the three nations, which said the planning request would send the crisis into a "logic of war" when diplomatic alternatives still stood a chance of success.

Deepening the dispute, Turkey called on NATO to reconsider the matter based on a key article in the North Atlantic Treaty, which established the alliance in 1949. "The parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened," the article says.

Turkey issues appeal for support

In the wake of the vetoes, Turkey's prime minister said the alliance had a moral obligation to its ally. "Turkey defended the whole of Europe during the Cold War," Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said. "We were the protective shield of Europe."

Turkey is worried that if the United States launched a war on Iraq it would become the target for Iraqi counterstrikes.

The issue is difficult for Schröder. He has said Germany would not fight any war against Iraq and would vote against any resolution that is presented in the U.N. Security Council to authorize such a war. But Germans serve on NATO's surveillance planes, and if the alliance provided the planes to Turkey, Schröder would have to decide whether they remain on board. If they were pulled out, the alliance would have a difficult time carrying out the mission.

A spokesman for the German Defense Ministry also said on Monday that Germany would be sending Patriot missiles to the Netherlands and that the Dutch would ship the missiles to Turkey.