Middles East: The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, plans to travel to the Middle East next week, leaving on Thursday for Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, US officials said.
However, the Israeli and Palestinian stops are tentative and depend entirely on the Palestinian legislature's confirmation of Mr Mahmud Abbas as prime minister, a move that will trigger the release of the long-delayed "road map" for Middle East peace, the officials said.
Palestinian lawmakers are expected to vote on Tuesday on the confirmation of Mr Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.
Because of uncertainty over the vote and continuing discussions about how the road map will actually be presented to Israel and the Palestinians, the officials said, Mr Powell's exact itinerary was still undetermined.
"One of the goals of the trip is working with the parties on implementing the steps in the road map, and so setting dates and a final itinerary is difficult until the Palestinians act," an official said.
The State Department is expected to formally announce the trip early next week.
Mr Powell said earlier this week that the US would take a more active role in the search for Middle East peace and reaffirmed President Bush's pledge to publish the road map once Mr Abbas was confirmed.
"With this new development and with the presentation of the road map, the President has instructed me to be prepared to engage much more fully and much more directly and much more aggressively in the process of moving forward along the road map," Mr Powell said in a speech to the US Asia-Pacific Council.
He described as a "breakthrough" the deal reached on Wednesday between Mr Abbas and the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, that opens the way for a reformist government, the creation of which has been a key demand of the authors of the road map, the international diplomatic "Quartet" on the Middle East. In addition to discussing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts on the trip, Mr Powell is also expected to review the situation in post-war Iraq with Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi leaders, officials said.
In Syria, he will be following up on US demands that Damascus cease co-operating with the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, stop its support for organisations Washington deems to be terrorist and halt its alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. - (AFP)