WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis more political power, administration officials said this week.

The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to participate in the political system, including the writing of a permanent constitution.

But the political feuding that delayed the formation of the new government for nearly three months after the elections has so far blocked the kind of concessions the Sunnis are demanding.

In particular, the Americans are pressing for Shiite hard-liners within the Jaafari government to make conciliatory gestures that would include allowing former Baath Party members to serve in the government, granting pensions to former army officers who served under Mr. Hussein, the ousted ruler and setting up courts that would try detainees seized in the anti-insurgency drive. The courts held many of them for a year and more without any legal recourse.

The government that took office almost two weeks ago under Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had a faltering start, leaving several cabinet posts earmarked for Sunni Arabs vacant, then filling them later with officials - including a new defense minister - who were quickly rejected by some hard-line Sunni representatives.

These critics said the nominees, though Sunni Arabs, were effectively pawns of the two Iran-backed religious parties at the head of the Shiite alliance that won the elections and now dominates the government.

The new government has 35 cabinet members, 7 of them Sunnis. That makes their representation nearly proportionate; Sunni Arabs are estimated at about 20 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.

But misgivings about the Sunni voice in the new cabinet were compounded this week, when the National Assembly named a 55-member committee to draft the new constitution. The panel has a 28-member majority from the Shiite alliance, and only two Sunni Arabs - both from parties that have shown little sign of drawing broad support in the Sunni Arab population.

American officials say that while some Arab Sunni groups will never lay down their arms, others have begun to recognize that their refusal to participate in the political process was a mistake. And the United States, meanwhile, still battling a seemingly intractable insurgency, has begun to forcefully press for a political solution. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference this week that the goal of the intensified insurgent attacks was to discredit the new government.