TEL AVIV, Dec 2: Israel issued a rare rebuke to the United States on Tuesday, saying Secretary of State Colin Powell would be making a mistake if he met the architects of a symbolic Middle East peace plan.

Powell responded by saying at a news conference in Tunis he had a right to meet anyone with ideas on Middle East peace.

Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert sharply criticized Powell for praising the unofficial Geneva Accord, whose co-authors are trying to capitalize on broad international support following its launch on Monday at a gala ceremony in Switzerland.

“I think he (Powell) is making a mistake,” Mr Olmert told Israel Radio of the expected talks. “I think he is not helping the process. I think this is a wrong step by a representative of the American administration.”

Both Israel’s right-leaning government and Palestinian militants have denounced the agreement, drafted by moderates from both sides, as “capitulation”.

US officials say Powell is willing to meet the plan’s co-authors in Washington later this week, a sign of growing impatience with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s foot-dragging on the stalled roadmap.

Powell, on a three-nation North African tour, did not explicitly say if he would meet the would-be peacemakers, Israeli left-wing opposition politician Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian cabinet member Yasser Abed Rabbo.

But he said: “I do not know why I or anyone else in the US government should deny ourselves the opportunity to hear from others who are committed to peace and who have ideas.”

Listening to individuals “who have interesting ideas” on peace, Powell said, “no way undercuts our strong support for the state of Israel”.

Powell, and the State Department he heads, are widely viewed in Israel as less supportive of Ariel Sharon’s government than US President George Bush. They are also seen as taking a back seat to the White House in setting policy towards the Jewish state.

Underlining the obstacles facing any new peace push, Israeli troops shot and killed a militant linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction during a tank raid in the West Bank town of Jenin on Tuesday, security sources said.

Palestinians say such incursions, including one in which three militants and a six-year-old boy were killed in Ramallah on Monday, could provoke militants to resume suicide bombings in Israel after a two-month lull.

A spokesman for Mr Beilin said the meeting with Powell, who has called the plan “useful” but no substitute for the roadmap, was expected on Friday.

Mr Olmert said there was an “element of subversion” in the Israeli role in the Geneva deal because of funding the negotiators received from the Swiss government.

Like the roadmap initiative, the Geneva Accord envisages a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory.

But it goes beyond the roadmap by calling for the removal of Jewish settlements, division of Al Quds and the right of Israel to decide how many Palestinian refugees to accept.

Yasser Arafat and his prime minister, Ahmed Qorei, have welcomed the Geneva initiative but stopped short of endorsing it.—Reuters