TEL AVIV, Israel, May 13 (UPI) -- Pressured by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Israeli and Palestinian officials Monday strove to arrange a meeting between their respective prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas.
Powell, who is touring Middle East capitals in an attempt to launch the "road map" for peace, meanwhile, flew to Egypt where he met President Hosni Mubarak and then continued to Jordan.
Earlier senior Palestinian sources had said Sharon would avoid meeting Mahmoud Abbas -- who is also known as Abu Mazen -- until after his trip to Washington.
But Israeli diplomatic sources said they expected the Sharon-Abbas meeting this weekend prior to Sharon's scheduled departure for the United States to discuss with President Bush and senior administration officials Israel's 15 reservations to the "road map."
The meeting would be the first between the two prime ministers since Abbas was confirmed in his post last month.
The Palestinian Authority has said it has no reservations about the "road map" and wants to negotiate its terms as they stand.
Devised by the Quartet -- composed of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- the "road map" sets a series of steps Israel and the Palestinians should take so that by 2005 the Palestinians will have a state of their own and Israel will have peace and security.
Although a Sharon-Abbas meeting is now being planned, diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said they expected no real breakthrough before Sharon sees Bush.
One of the key reservations concerns the Palestinian demand for a right of return for Palestinians who left their old towns and villages as a result of the first Israel-Arab war, in 1948.
By now, with their children and grandchildren they number several million. The Israelis maintain that such an influx would shatter Israel's character and it would no longer be a Jewish state.
The "road map" says the refugee issue should be tackled in the last stage of the negotiations. By then, according to the plan, the Palestinians would have a temporary state. But Israeli leaders want the point cleared in the early stages of any "road map" negotiations.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has argued that once the Palestinians have a state, there would be no bargaining point to put pressure on them to forgo or modify their demand. Sharon Monday told Y-net, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper Web site, that the right of return should be resolved, "in the framework of establishing a Palestinian state."
The Israelis are also pressing for decisive action against militant Palestinian groups as a prerequisite to Israel making any of the significant steps it is supposed to make, such as pulling its troops out of the West Bank and Gaza.
On Monday, hours after promising Powell that it would loosen restrictions on the Palestinians' freedom of movement, Israel re-sealed the Gaza strip citing security considerations. On Sunday thousands of Palestinians had crossed from Gaza to Israel across border checkpoints that had been closed to more than two weeks.
New instruction that went into effect at 1 a.m. restricted all crossing except for diplomats, U.N. officials and humanitarian cases. Foreign journalists protested that they were not included in the exceptions.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told his colleagues in the Likud Knesset faction that two power centers have emerged in the Palestinian Authority: one headed by Yasser Arafat heads and the other led by Abu Mazen.
"Arafat will make every effort to torpedo this process (to reach a settlement) ... and is continuing these efforts, also through encouragement of terror ... some of which we have witnessed in recent days," Mofaz said. Two Israelis were killed in roadside ambushes in the West Bank in recent days.
Mofaz said Shabak (Israel Security Agency) reports "at least 50 reports of the beginning of plans to carry out attacks." The Israelis want to make sure there is a real crackdown on militant groups, not just a cease-fire agreement.
Sharon warned that without assurances of a Palestinian crackdown, Palestinian militants "will have an opportunity to regroup, produce arms, and smuggle arms, they will be quiet for a few months and then the (fighting) will erupt again."
Powell left behind in Jerusalem deputy assistant secretary of state, David Satterfield, to help promote the "road map."
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official told UPI Satterfield would head team to coordinate with the Israelis and Palestinians, and then establish monitors to supervise compliance with the "road map."
Israel says the monitoring system should be similar to one that exists today, involving both sides' security agencies and the CIA.
"On political and security issues -- only American monitors, not others," Sharon told Y-net. Contributing countries could be involved in monitoring financial and economic matters he said.
Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou arriving in Israel, Monday, on behalf of the European Union, rejected Israeli urgings not to see Arafat because that would strengthen his position.
The Greek minister countered that isolating Arafat would lead him to undermine the Palestinian prime minister. Instead, the EU will demand they back Abu Mazen, an Israeli participant in the meeting said.
Israeli soldiers shot and reportedly killed two Palestinian militants Monday as they were trying to plant a bomb in a southern Gaza Strip location, and arrested seven people in the West Bank town of Qalqilya.
The seven include the town's head of the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the army said.
The army also reported that four Palestinian detainees held in the Ofer camp, south east of Ramallah, escaped after having dug a 7-meter-long ( 7.65 yard) tunnel, about a meter (about 1 yard) under a concrete wall.
