Powell Meets Architects of Mideast Peace Plan

The Israeli and Palestinian authors of an unofficial Middle East peace plan presented their proposals to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Friday but were unable to alter the Bush administration’s approach to peacemaking between the two sides.

“It was a very good meeting,” Powell said. “We welcome other ideas.”

However, Powell said that another initiative, the U.S.-backed “road map” for Mideast peace, remained the focus of the administration’s effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said that the road map, which called for establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, would not be altered as a result of Powell’s meeting with former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed-Rabbo, his Palestinian negotiating partner.

Ereli also said there were no plans for a follow-up meeting, although contact at some level could not be ruled out.

Beilin and Abed-Rabbo then went to New York to see U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who agrees with them about seeking an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

After that meeting, Abed-Rabbo said he and Beilin stressed in their meetings with both Powell and Annan that their peace plan was complementary to the road map -- not in conflict with it.

Annan echoed Powell’s view that the road map remains “the key mechanism,” said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.

The United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia make up the so-called quartet that crafted the road map for peace.