MIDDLE EAST: The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday appealed to Israel and the Palestinians not to let the latest surge in violence torpedo renewed peace efforts and played down expectations that his weekend visit to Syria would produce any breakthrough.
Mr Powell, starting a lightning four-nation tour of Europe and the Middle East in Madrid, urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to look beyond the flare-up in violence that surrounded the long-delayed release on Wednesday of the so-called road-map for peace.
"We've got to get beyond this period of suicide bombings and retaliatory actions or other defensive actions that are taken to end the violence," Mr Powell said at a news conference with the Spanish Foreign Minister, Ms Ana Palaçio.
He referred to a Palestinian attack in Tel Aviv on the eve of the document's publication that killed three and an Israeli raid earlier yesterday in Gaza that left 12 Palestinians dead, including a two-year-old child.
"We can't let these sorts of incident immediately contaminate the road-map or contaminate the process that we are now involved in," Mr Powell said, calling on the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmud Abbas, "to keep driving on" toward peace.
"This is the time for \ to keep driving on to find a peaceful way forward even when faced with these kinds of tragic scenes," he said.
Although Mr Powell will not visit Israel or the Palestinian territories on his current trip, he is due to return to the Middle East next week and is expected in Israel on May 8th to open talks with Mr Sharon and Mr Abbas about how to implement the road-map.
This calls for an end to violence, an Israeli pullback from Palestinian territories and a freeze on Jewish settlements as steps to creating a Palestinian state by 2005.
In its third and final phase, the road-map also calls for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace deal that includes Lebanon and Syria.
Mr Powell will be presenting Washington's views on this in Damascus and Beirut on Saturday.- (AFP)