JERUSALEM – Roger G. Harrison, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, was injured Monday is an automobile collision on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, the Israeli police said. A woman in another car was killed.  

The police said Mr. Harrison was undergoing surgery at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. A police spokeswoman said three other men in the ambassador’s chauffeur driven car were injured in the accident. 

“Even there, it was becoming more of a meeting with the leadership, rather than a leader,” he said.  

But since the aborted coup in August, officials said, uncertainty about Mr. Gorbachev’s powers as a negotiating partner has increased sharply. That has left the administration in what an official called “an end-game situation” in which Washington is approaching the point at which it must decide whether to deal with the central government or the republics. “The talk for the past two months is how they are going to create a center, but everything that we’ve been seeing is moving away from the center,” an official said.