The announcement, accepting a longstanding invitation from the White House, came after Mr. Abbas reached a power-sharing agreement with Yasir Arafat, the pre-eminent Palestinian leader, at least temporarily easing tension between the two men.

The visit, as well as one around the same time by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, is likely to step up pressure on Mr. Bush to personally arbitrate the competing claims of the two sides. Each says the other is moving too slowly.

Palestinian officials said Mr. Abbas's decision to go to Washington reflected a belief that he has taken enough difficult steps to strengthen his demand that Israel take a politically sensitive step like halting expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"They think they will get something from the Americans," one Palestinian official said.

Mr. Sharon is to meet Mr. Bush at the end of the month, but no date has been set, Israeli officials said. Israel is urging Washington to step up pressure on Mr. Abbas to confiscate the weapons of militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israel also is demanding that Mr. Arafat be stripped of any authority.

Mr. Abbas will be the highest-ranking Palestinian official to visit at the White House with Mr. Bush, who never invited Mr. Arafat, severing all official ties to him 13 months ago. 

Indeed, Mr. Abbas will be only the second official of the governing Palestinian Authority to see Mr. Bush at the White House, Palestinian officials said. Mr. Bush met in May with Salam Fayyad, the finance minister.

Mr. Abbas will be accompanied by his security minister, Muhammad Dahlan, according to an official in Mr. Dahlan's office.

The White House did not immediately confirm a statement from Mr. Abbas that the meeting would be July 25. 

In the statement, Mr. Abbas said that the subject of the meeting would be the peace plan, known as the road map, "particularly the Israeli commitments." He said he would seek a freeze in settlement construction and the release of "Palestinian political prisoners." 

Israel has not stopped settlement construction as called for in the first of the plan's three phases. That step is not required under the plan to release Palestinian prisoners. Mr. Sharon has begun to release several hundred prisoners not charged with serious wrongdoing, but Palestinian officials want him to release far more, including those Israel has accused of terrorism. 

Without that concession, they say, Mr. Abbas, who remains widely unpopular, will not have the political backing to take the toughest security steps called for in the plan.

For the Palestinians, the first phase of the plan calls for "commencing confiscation of illegal weapons." Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said that step, or any arrests of their members, would nullify an agreement among the main Palestinian factions to suspend attacks on Israelis for at least three months.

As specified in the plan, Israel has begun withdrawing from areas of Gaza and the West Bank that it had ceded to Palestinian control under the Oslo accords. Israel took back those areas last year after a series of suicide bombings.

But after withdrawing from parts of Gaza and most of the West Bank city of Bethlehem more than two weeks ago, Israel refused to pull back elsewhere until Mr. Abbas began acting against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups.

Mr. Abbas met with Mr. Bush in Aqaba, Jordan, early last month at a three-way summit meeting with Mr. Sharon that signaled the formal introduction of the peace plan, as well as Mr. Bush's plunge into the thicket of Middle East diplomacy.

Mr. Bush, who had tried to avoid the deep involvement here of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, has said he is now committed to enacting the plan, which calls for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and a Palestinian state in three years. 

For several weeks, Mr. Abbas had an open invitation to the White House but he resisted going, fearing that doing so might intensify a growing rivalry with Mr. Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Abbas had said he would not go to Washington until Israel lifted its siege on Mr. Arafat and permitted him to begin traveling freely.

But after their tensions burst into the open last week in an attack by Mr. Arafat on Mr. Abbas's handling of negotiations, the two men worked out an arrangement that guarantees Mr. Arafat influence over bargaining with Israel and the Palestinian security forces. 

Mr. Abbas was appointed by Mr. Arafat under great international pressure, and the Palestinian parliament confirmed him, while voting him broad powers to form a new government. Mr. Abbas serves at Mr. Arafat's pleasure, however, and Mr. Arafat retains the first loyalty of some of Mr. Abbas's ministers as well as that of many of the Palestinian security chiefs.

Further, Mr. Arafat has taken several seemingly bureaucratic steps to preserve his influence. In May Mr. Arafat ordered the Palestinian governors to begin reporting to him rather than to the interior minister. The Interior Ministry had moved under Mr. Abbas's control.

Now, Palestinian officials said, Mr. Arafat has ordered police chiefs to report directly to the governors.