MIDDLE EAST: The US State Department's special Middle East envoy spent the weekend trying without conspicuous success to put pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders into complying with a peace framework they all profess to accept - the so-called road map.
Mr William Burns's efforts were overshadowed by controversy surrounding a second peace plan which has no official sanction - the Geneva Accord, negotiated by Israeli left-wingers and Palestinian moderates and set to be formally launched in Switzerland today.
Mr Burns held talks with the top Israeli government and Palestinian Authority leaders, attempting to persuade them to honour the terms of the internationally backed road map and to resume direct negotiations.
Despite public criticism from President Bush, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, says he will not dismantle all illegal settlements and remains resolute that he will neither halt construction nor alter the route of a massive security barrier which departs from the pre-1967 Israel border and lapses into the West Bank.
Despite similar words of rebuke from Mr Bush, the Palestinian Authority is still breaching the road map commitment to dismantle Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups which have carried out bombings in Israel over the past three years.
Relations between the Israelis and the PA actually appear to be worsening. What should have been the straightforward task of arranging a meeting between Mr Sharon and the PA's Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Korei, has been dragging on for days.
Mr Korei said on Saturday that he would not meet Mr Sharon so long as work on the barrier continued. Mr Sharon retorted yesterday: "No condition shall be accepted . . . regarding the cessation of the fence, dismantling of the fence and other fabrications."
Such verbal crossfire underlines the profound gulf of mistrust and enmity between Israeli and Palestinians leaders after more than three years of relentless conflict - a reality the initiators of the Geneva Accord say they are seeking to supplant.
Described by its signatories - led by former Israeli Justice Minister, Mr Yossi Beilin, and former Palestinian Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo - as a "virtual" accord, it involves unprecedented concessions by both sides, intended to provoke the official leaderships into similar steps.
Infuriated that the text appears to involve Palestinians withdrawing their demand for a potential "right of return" to Israel for millions of refugees, numerous Palestinian factions have rejected it.
Trying to leave Gaza en route to today's ceremony in Geneva, four signatories were kicked, beaten and denounced as traitors by hundreds of screaming protesters.
Other Palestinian signatories, who had said earlier they would not attend the ceremony having failed to gain explicit encouragement from Mr Arafat, have said that they will attend after all, at the PA chairman's express urging.
On the Israeli side, the very principle of non-government politicians negotiating such an accord has been termed "subversive" by Mr Sharon.