Gloom and low expectations cast a shadow over a meeting of Middle East mediators in New York yesterday because of uncertainty in Palestinian politics and a preoccupation with Iraq.
High-level representatives of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN will meet at UN headquarters to take stock of the stalemate in carrying out the Middle East peace plan they floated in April.
The plan has been bogged down over Israeli demands that the Palestinian Authority crack down on militants and Palestinian suspicions that Israel would give nothing in return even if the authority dismantles militant groups like Hamas.
In the meantime, violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and Israeli threats to expel or kill Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, have made it harder to resume talks.
A senior US official said the mediators, known as the Middle East Quartet, were waiting to see what kind of Palestinian government emerges under prime minister-designate Ahmed Qurie, also known as Abu Ala. Arafat named Qurie to take over from Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned in protest at US and Israeli policies and at Arafat's failure to give him the authority he wanted.
The meeting brings together US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and three European officials led by foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
They act as sponsors and advocates of the Middle East "road map," which sets out steps Israelis and Palestinians must make to achieve a permanent two-state peace settlement by 2005. The Quartet is divided three-to-one, the US against the rest, on the question of whether they should treat Arafat as the representative of the Palestinian people.
Diplomats said foreign ministers of the G8's major industrialized powers shared a sense of despair about the worsening conflict when they discussed it on Wednesday night. While they agreed to keep the Quartet alive, the mood was one of hopelessness, one diplomat said.
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