The Palestinians have renewed their longstanding demand for greater US involvement in the Middle East peace process ahead of this weekend's UN General Assembly session and called for Israel to take steps to boost Yasser Arafat's authority.
"We'd like to the United States become thoroughly involved once again in this peace process, there is no other alternative," Palestinian Minister for International Cooperation Nabil Shaath said.
"We would like to see the (US) political vision enunciated clearly because that is the political light at the end of the tunnel," he told reporters after meeting here with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell hopes to meet with Arafat on the sidelines of the UN session but Shaath was unable to confirm that the Palestinian leader would attend the gathering, a senior State Department official said.
"President Arafat will have to make his own plans about whether he can come or not," Shaath said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has already cancelled plans to attend the UN General Assembly citing the ongoing violence in the region.
Should Arafat attend, a second US official said President George W. Bush was contemplating an "accidental" meeting with him.
"What's under consideration is nothing formal, just an accidental meeting with a handshake maybe," the official said.
Shaath, who said Arafat would welcome a meeting with either Bush or Powell, also called for US monitors to be deployed to assess the implementation of ceasefire agreements made with Israel.
And he urged the Jewish state to relent in its "suffocating siege" of the Palestinian people to empower Arafat to crack down on violence.
AFP