US Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders increased pressure on the Bush administration to immediately send a presidential envoy to restart the 'road map' peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
However, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the National Interreligious Initiative for Peace, whose organisations have about 100 million constituents, that Palestinians needed to curb violence before an envoy could be useful.
"Unless the United States makes the road map and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations an urgent priority now, the cycles of violence will jeopardize prospects for a two-state solution, further alienate our European and Mideast Arab allies, exacerbate conflict in Iraq, and increase the terrorist threat to the United States," the group said in a statement after meeting Powell.
The delegation included Roman Catholic cardinals and the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the heads of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and the head of the Islamic Society of North America and the president of the Council of Mosques. It did not include high-level representation of Orthodox Jews.
The moribund road map urges the sides to defuse the violence and negotiate toward a settlement based on two states.