A senior US envoy held talks with new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas today, bypassing President Yasser Arafat in high-level contacts on peace.
Assistant Secretary of State Williams Burns was preparing the ground, ahead of a visit later this week by Secretary of State Colin Powell, for the most concerted peace drive in the region since US-brokered talks collapsed in mid-2000.
A US-backed "road map" envisaging an end to 31 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 was on the agenda at the talks between Mr Burns and Mr Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Mr Burns's talks came one day after a surprise decision by dovish former general Mr Amram Mitzna to resign as Israeli opposition leader, leaving the Jewish state's veteran peace party in turmoil. The decision came five months after Mr Mitzna led Labor to its most devastating election defeat.
Mr Burns's Middle East peace efforts also coincided with news that Israel had rejected a peace overture from Syria - which wants Israel to return the Golan Heights seized in a 1967 war - before the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March.
Israel's Maariv daily said a Syrian proposal to resume peace talks was made in secret contacts in Jordan between Israeli businessmen and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother.
"It was decided that treatment of the matter would be delayed until Syria's true local and international situation becomes clear in the fallout of the Iraqi war," a source in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said.
Maariv said Sharon felt at the time that Syria was making only a tactical move aimed at currying favor with Washington ahead of the expected conflict in Iraq. A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined comment on the report.
Israeli-Syrian peace talks broke down in January 2000 over the future of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.