conditionals - Is this sentence correct? (Tense)

Conditionals seem to be a pretty basic unit of grammar, but this sentence nevertheless got me stuck:

The experts were felt to have little hope of reducing the differences, even if
an attempt were made to bring the two parties together.

The use of were seems incorrect here, doesn't it? Given that the sentence is in the past tense, the unreal conditional should read

...an attempt had been made...

If the real conditional is implied, was is required, since, to the best of my knowledge, the use of were with a singular 3rd person is restricted solely to unreal conditionals. I have also come across the were to have been construction, but that doesn't seem to apply in this case.

So, in summation, is it just me, or is the sentence incorrect? I'll be truly grateful for an answer.

Answer

I find the passive voice of feel to be a little distracting. Let's transpose the voice to active and use another verb. Try the version below, which I don't think changes the meaning:

The audience thought that the experts have little hope of reducing the differences, even if an attempt were made to bring the two parties together.

Now we can see that this is really a report of past speech, i.e., what the audience was thinking at the time they were listening to the experts:

"These experts have little hope of reducing differences, even if an attempt were made to bring the two parties together."

Now, when these thoughts are reported after the fact, the person doing the reporting may transpose the tenses to represent past time. This is called backshift, and it would look like this:

The audience thought that the experts had little hope of reducing the differences, even if an attempt had been made to bring the two parties together.

But backshift isn't required, especially if the statement reported is still true at the time of the report. In finding the present tense in the report, we understand that the audience still feels this way about the experts.