Jul 12, 2002 3 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush resumed Middle East diplomacy Thursday, conferring by telephone with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan about his peace plan. The two Arab leaders are eager for prompt action on a Palestinian state and a resumption of negotiations for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.

Egypt’s Middle East News Agency said Mubarak “stressed the need to work to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.”

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin registered his government’s impatience at a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

De Villepin said Israel must withdraw to the borders it had before defeating the Arabs in the 1967 Mideast war and gaining control of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. “We feel we need to fight very strongly against terror,” he said, endorsing U.S. policy on that front. But the French minister also stressed a need for prompt “political action,” warning that “a vacuum can be very dangerous and let the terrorists and those who don’t want peace take the initiative.”

At a news conference, de Villepin tried to revive the idea of an international peace conference, which the Bush administration has temporarily shelved. He said it need not deal with the future of Jerusalem and the status of Palestinian refugees – two explosive issues – but could “create the momentum to put pressure on everyone for a quick settlement.”

Bush is insisting on widespread reform within the Palestinian movement before helping to set up a Palestinian state. He has not called on Israel to reverse its latest military drive into Palestinian-held areas as part of an anti-terror campaign.

The president has accused the Palestinian leadership both of corruption and involvement with terror attacks on Israel.

Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi ministers are expected to come to Washington next week for talks at the White House.

In the meantime, Powell is making arrangements to meet Tuesday in New York with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, European Union diplomat Javier Solana and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

They probably will be joined at a second session that day by Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian ministers, but administration officials in Washington and diplomatic sources at the United Nations said that session had not been nailed down.

Terror attacks on Israel have subsided, and Arab and European governments have renewed their push for prompt diplomatic action on Palestinian statehood and Israeli withdrawal.

De Villepin met in Damascus on Saturday with Syrian President Bashar Assad and called on Israel to stop building Jewish settlements on the West Bank, end its occupation and help create a “viable, sovereign and democratic” Palestinian state.

On Monday, in Moscow, de Villepin and Ivanov forged a united front on the Middle East. Both backed Yasser Arafat as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people, in contrast to Bush’s public demand for his ouster.

“He was elected,” de Villepin said. “The Palestinian people should make the decision about who should represent this people.”