Powell, Mideast peace negotiators meet

WASHINGTON -- Brushing aside complaints by Israel, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with the negotiators of an unofficial peace plan Friday but suggested their initiative was unlikely to be used by the administration to help jumpstart the stalled peace process.

"It was a very good meeting," Powell told reporters later. Powell said he "had a chance to describe to them the primacy of the road map as the document that the sides agree upon at this moment, referring to the U.S.-backed peace plan.

"They had a chance to share with me the reason for the work that they have been doing and how they believe it can contribute to the process toward peace and how it is complementary to the road map," Powell added. "It was a good discussion."

Powell's public comments on the meeting were more upbeat than an official statement drafted through the interagency process that had been issued earlier by the State Department after the meeting ended. That statement said Powell told Israeli the negotiators -- former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and forme Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo -- that the road map "provides the appropriate pathway for moving to the realization of that vision and that there are no shortcuts along the way." It added that Powell hopes such "private citizens' activities will improve cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians."

There was some tension between the White House and State Department over Beilin and Rabbo's visit. State Department officials had viewed the meeting as way to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be more accommodating to Palestinian concerns. But in recent days the White House moved to take some control over the event, convincing Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to cancel his meeting with the negotiators and telling Jewish groups that the statement issued after the meeting would be lukewarm at best.

The unofficial effort, known as the Geneva Accord, attempts to leapfrog the current stalemate by dealing with tough issues deferred by the road map plan, such as the status of Jewish settlements, the role of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinians to claim land in Israel. The road map defers such issues until its third phase, after the establishment of an interim Palestinian state.

Israeli officials have denounced the Geneva Accord and said Powell was making a mistake according it any respect. President Bush launched the road map with fanfare in June, but little progress has been made on even the initial steps outlined in the first phase of the plan -- a fact that the drafters of the Geneva initiative was due to the lack of a detailed vision in the road map.

The key figures in the unofficial effort emerged from the meeting at the State Department saying the atmopherics of the exchange with Powell and two lower-level officials was hopeful. "We were encouraged," Rabbo told reporters. "This is a very encouraging beginning."

"We believe that this debate is a most helpful one and the most healthy one," said Beilin. Both men then headed up to New York for a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The initiative has been praised by a number of world leaders. Friday, seven former U.S. national security advisers, defense secretaries and a Secretary of State from both parties issued a statement saying the Geneva Accord and another similar effort deserve "strong support" because it is necessary to "address at the outset, not at the end of an incremental process, all the basic principles of a fair and lasting solution."

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