WASHINGTON, March 1: The United States gave signs on Thursday of moving towards a more supportive position on the Saudi peace proposals, describing them as marking a “significant and positive step.”

This was the characterization offered by both State Department spokesman Richard Boucher at his daily briefing and deputy spokesman Philip Reeker at a special briefing later for Washington-based foreign journalists.

Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns, who was sent out by the Bush administration to Saudi Arabia on a flying visit to discuss the peace proposals, was on his way back to Washington even as the briefings were being conducted. Burns met Crown Prince Abdullah during his brief stay in Saudi Arabia.

The United States continues to underline the importance of an end to violence, placing the onus for it on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and of the Mitchell Committee report as well as the Tenet security plan.

Boucher said at his briefing: “We have been quite clear that we think this (the Abdullah plan) is a significant and positive step. But we have been as clear that it’s not the answer to all the questions, and that a maximum effort by Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority is still required to get to those elements that can be negotiated, to get to those elements that can be resolved, and can only be resolved by negotiation. The issue at hand is stopping the violence. That remains the issue.”

Deputy spokesman Reeker pointed out that the Saudi proposals, the Mitchell report and the Tenet plan should not be seen as being mutually exclusive, and the latter two should be considered as road maps pointing towards peace. But it was absolutely essential that the violence must end. Reeker described the ideas presented by Crown Prince Abdullah as an Arab vision for normalization of relations with Israel.

The White House has also defined the US approach as seeking to build on the Mitchell report and underlined the need for what press secretary Ari Fleischer has described an “incremental” rather than a “one-shot” solution.

However, he got into some trouble with reporters by his implicit criticism of the Clinton administration’s approach to the Middle East when his remark at an off-camera morning briefing that one shouldn’t seek to “shoot at the moon” was taken to imply that he attributed the present flare-up in violence in region as due to the failure of president Clinton’s effort at Camp David during his last months in office.

Fleischer spent a considerable time at his Thursday briefing in seeking to deny any such implication, but he did also point out that the latest bout of violence had erupted following the collapse of the Camp David summit.