TEL AVIV, May 10: US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday urged Israel and the Palestinians to begin implementing the internationally-backed roadmap for peace.

“Let us get started now,” Powell told a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

Mr Powell, who arrived in Jerusalem Saturday night, said new Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas needed to crack down on militant groups like Hamas to comply with the roadmap which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel by 2005.

“One of the great challenges to Abbas is how to deal with organisations like Hamas or Islamic Jihad ... A ceasefire that does not deal with the fundamental issue of an armed group is not a complete solution.”

Turning to the Israelis, Mr Powell reiterated US President George W. Bush’s demand for a freeze on all Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“As President Bush said we expect setlement activity to end and we have had extensive assurances from the Israeli government about this,” he said.

The three-phase roadmap, unveiled on April 30, aims at ending the 31-month intifada and demands reciprocal steps by the Israelis and Palestinians to achieve a lasting peace.

Israel ambivalent: Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said on Saturday Israel would refrain from taking measures that could endanger its security in the occupied Palestinian territories, including any withdrawal.

He declined to spell out those measures, although he ruled out an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

He spoke just hours before he was due to meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the start of a regional tour to press Israel and the Palestinians to implement an international peace “roadmap”.

“We are willing to take humanitarian measures to facilitate the lives of the Palestinian people but we will not agree to gestures capable of putting Israeli lives in danger,” Shalom told Israeli public radio.

Israeli public radio said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would hold consultations on Sunday morning to draw up a list of these measures before talks scheduled with Mr Powell.

After meeting Mr Sharon, the secretary of state will hold talks on Sunday with the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, before visits to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, to discuss the roadmap.

US officials have asked Israel to ease sanctions it has imposed on the Palestinian people in a bid to help Mr Abbas — a moderate favourable to reining in militants — carry on his task.

But Mr Shalom said attempts by Abbas to conclude a “temporary ceasefire” with radical Palestinian groups such as Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, who spearhead the armed struggle against Israel, would offer a mere “optical illusion”.

“It would bring truce, but it would trigger international pressure on us to pull back to pre-Sept 28, 2000, lines without disarming the terrorist organizations,” he said in reference to the start of the intifada.—AFP