The meeting will explore ways to bolster the conservative bloc and may debate the possibility of introducing "flying" primates to oversee dissenting dioceses or appointing a retired bishop to act as a commissary for the archbishop.

The bishops are also anxious to persuade increasingly impatient hard-liners to stay within a broad-based grouping rather than split away and form a rival province under an evangelical primate from Africa or Asia.

The news of the trip will be greeted with dismay by liberals, who will see it as further evidence that Dr Williams is preparing to take action against the American Episcopal Church for failing to toe the conservative line on homosexuals that is demanded by the majority of Anglicans.

Most Anglican leaders believe that the Episcopal Church's General Convention fell short of meeting requests by Dr Williams and his fellow primates, as well as the Windsor report that he initiated, to rein in its liberal tendencies when it met in Columbus, Ohio, in June.

The archbishop may feel that he has no alternative but to expel the liberal Americans from the worldwide Church by withdrawing their invitations from the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

He has said that the worldwide Church may have to divide into two tiers following the crisis initiated by the consecration of Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop in 2003, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, who was ordained as the Bishop of New Hampshire.

The consultation will be spearheaded by the Bishop of Texas, the Rt Rev Don Wimberley, in an atmosphere of bitter division in America.

Seven conservative dioceses have already appealed to Dr Williams for "alternative oversight" from a sympathetic primate because they have lost faith in their own Church, and many parishes have left.

END

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