Quartet to meet some Arab states on Friday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators plans to meet officials from four Arab states in Egypt on Friday to discuss a five-year-old Arab League peace proposal, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday.

The meeting will gather the Quartet members -- the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- with officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The talks will take place in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after a meeting of Iraq's neighbours, ministers from the Group of Eight nations and the European Union to discuss how to stabilise Iraq.

Washington has been trying to promote the Arab League peace initiative in the hope it might bring states like Saudi Arabia, which do not recognise Israel, to deal publicly with the Jewish state and to help support Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The 2002 initiative called on Israel to withdraw from all land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, to reach an "agreed, just" solution for Palestinian refugees and to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital.

In return, Arab states would consider the conflict over, enter a peace treaty with Israel and establish normal relations with the Jewish state.

The plan made little headway when first floated amid a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel and was initially rebuffed by Israel because of the demand it withdraw to the pre-1967 borders.

After the plan was relaunched at an Arab League summit in March, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he saw positive points in it, though Israel opposes the return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in what is now the Jewish state and wants to retain major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

McCormack said the idea for the meeting originated with Egypt, and that the United States thought it would be useful "to hear directly from the Arab League representatives as to what underpins their initiative, what their plans are for briefing it to other states, including the Israelis."