The international diplomatic quartet which drafted a "roadmap" to peace between Israel and the Palestinians was due to meet later in a five-star hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea to discuss the next steps of implementing the plan.

The talks were to be attended by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Europe's top foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

At the inaugural WEF session Saturday, King Abdullah II of Jordan insisted that the "vast majority" of Israelis and Palestinians wanted peace and said the quartet would discuss how to quickly implement the "roadmap."

The quartet "will focus on a Palestinian security agreement in exchange for a series of measures that Israel must take to ease checkpoints, unblock (Palestinian) funds and free (Palestinian) political prisoners," Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher had told AFP.

Separate meetings are due to take place between quartet members and Arab ministers on the sidelines of the forum. There are also plans for talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom and his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts.

Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath had also been expected to meet Shalom, but Arab officials told AFP that Israel's killing of a top Hamas leader in the West Bank late Saturday had cast doubt on the meeting.

Shaath told reporters the killing of Abdullah Qawasmeh was a "negative and horrible" act -- but said it would not stand in the way of implementing the roadmap.

Former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres told AFP that a US-brokered summit between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers at Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4 provided "a political start and now we have an economic start"

"If they fail it will be catastrophic," the veteran Israeli politician said.

Peres also described the WEF summit in which hundreds of world and business leaders are debating ways of healing the woes of the Middle East and rebuilding Iraq as a chance for a new beginning.

The meeting is "to show that it is not enough to fight terror but also we have to create a new economic alternative for the region," said Peres who shared a Nobel Peace prize with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Meanwhile in the corridors of the forum, European and Arab delegates had generous praise for US efforts to seek a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement, although many had reservations over its policies in Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told a debate on Middle East peace Saturday he was pleased with Washington for taking "the driver's seat' in efforts to implement the "roadmap."

Moasher agreed saying "the Americans are making considerable efforts to help the two parties to reach a (peace) accord".

But debates on rebuilding war-battered Iraq were less harmonious.

"The majority of participants have blamed the US administration for having failed to plan ahead of time for the phase following the fall of the Iraqi regime," one delegate told AFP.

"They have also voiced their concern over the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Iraq," said the delegate who declined to be named.

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