WASHINGTON, Feb 28: Official reaction here to the Saudi peace plan has been circumspect, but the Bush administration on Thursday despatched a senior State Department official to Saudi Arabia to discuss the plan with its author, Crown Prince Abdullah.

The administration’s move was welcomed by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who told The New York Times in an interview that the plan needed a “very strong and very quick push from outside.”

The Saudi proposals, which envisage Arab normalization of relations with Israel once it pulls back to the 1967 border, have been welcomed by the European Union and Russia, but the United States has so far described them as “interesting” and worth following up. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said the Bush administration was prepared to aggressively pursue several peace openings in the Middle East, but insisted that the onus for curtailing violence and moving forward remained on Mr Arafat.

Mr Powell suggested in an interview with the Times that the plan needed to be fleshed out more before “we declare we have a solution. It isn’t a solution in and of itself. It just adds something to the equation.” He noted that a formulation such as a withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders was “easily said, but a very difficult concept to get total agreement on.” Administration officials had previously described it as being more of a vision at this stage than a concrete plan.

Observers say sending Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns, a frequent negotiator with both Israel and the Palestinians, to Saudi Arabia was an indication that the administration did not want to give the appearance that it was not seriously pursuing the Abdullah initiative. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is due to visit Washington this weekend, and the issue would no doubt be gone over with him. However, the administration would probably want to wait till the Arab summit towards the end of March in Beirut before getting more involved with any new overtures in the Middle East. Administration officials appear to believe that there has been input of other Arab views into the Saudi plan. United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 both enshrine the principle of Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders in what is often described as a land-for-peace formula.

A Middle East expert, Steven Cook, research fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Dawn on Thursday he believed the plan held out promise and had elements to offer for both Israel and the Palestinians. For Israel, it offers normalization of relations, including trade and travel, and for Palestinians, it envisages full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, including the vacation of East Jerusalem.

At the same time, Mr Cook pointed out, there were a number of pitfalls, not least being the fact that not even the most dovish Israeli leader had been prepared to accept a return to the pre-1967 situation. The Palestinians would notice that missing from the plan was any mention of the right to return for Palestinian refugees, which had been the major sticking point in the last Camp David negotiations under the Clinton administration when the two sides were otherwise believed to have been close to an agreement. Jerusalem and the question of Jewish neighbourhoods would also pose problems, Mr Cook said.

The Saudi crown prince might have felt impelled to announce his proposals at this particular time, Mr Cook suggested, because there was a feeling that the US was not engaging itself in the Middle East as much as it could and this was a way to attract its attention to the region.

On the other hand, Mr Cook said, the Bush administration did not want to become too deeply involved with any move that might, as happened during the Clinton days, eventually prove abortive. Israeli commentators appear to be divided over the plan, some describing it as “still born” and intended merely as a gesture to repair Saudi Arabia’s post-Sept 11 strained relations with the US and others stressing that it marked the readiness of a powerful and influential Arab country to accept Israel.

Other analysts stress that the Abdullah plan addresses one of the main problems, an end to Israeli occupation, which was also one of the key points underlined by Secretary Powell in an address a couple of months ago in which he had outlined his view of a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.