Powell backs alternative ME peace plan

After dismissing the private, largely symbolic negotiations for weeks, the administration suddenly is eagerly endorsing the effort, and by implication the dovish terms.

Some American analysts said they view the surprising US move as a way of prodding Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to get busy on a moribund US-backed road map for peacemaking with the Palestinians.

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"They are trying to send a message to Sharon, without saying so explicitly," said former US mediator Dennis Ross.

"It does reflect a deep concern," former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk said, referring to the virtual halt to any active US diplomacy.

There are two parallel, private efforts under way, and both suddenly have the administration's blessing.

One is a petition that Israeli Adm. Ami Ayalon and Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh have circulated. It calls on Israel to give up all the territory the Arabs lost in the 1967 Middle East war and turn the land over to the Palestinians for a state.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech in Washington this week, disclosed he had met with Ayalon and Nusseibeh. Praising their campaign, Wolfowitz said, "As Americans, we know there are times when great changes can extend from the grass roots."

In a second, more significant effort, former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo held private talks and came up with a plan for a Palestinian state on nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza. Most Jewish settlers would be uprooted.

The plan also would give Palestinians control of a disputed holy shrine in Jerusalem's walled Old City an elevated mosque compound that was once home to the biblical Jewish temples. In return, Palestinians would give up their demand for the "right of return" of about 4 million Palestinian war refugees and their descendants to Israel.

Sharon has sharply attacked the Israelis involved in that effort, saying they had no right to go behind the back of the government to make concessions, even in a symbolic deal.

Reuters adds: Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said yesterday President Yasser Arafat had agreed to a security deal that would split power between the interior ministry and the national security council.

Qurie had proposed that Hakam Balawi, favored by Arafat's Fatah faction for interior minister, cede control over Palestinian security forces to the council, a move hoped to satisfy reform requirements in a US-backed peace plan.