Bush to meet with Arafat in due time

The US secretary of state Colin Powell has announced that US President George Bush will be meeting with the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at the suitable time " when we achieve a progress in solving the crisis between the Israelis and the Palestinians." On Sunday Powell met with Arafat and with the Israeli foreign minister Shemon Peres.

News reports said that Powell on Sunday evening took part in the meeting attended by the UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the French foreign minister Igore Ivanov and the higher representative of the European Union for foreign policy Javier Solana in order to find out means of giving the ME peace process a push forward.

Powell considered that the speech made by President Bush at the UN on Saturday as aiming not to calm down or to please, rather to give the ME peace a push forward.