The secretary general of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Nayef Hawatmeh, played host on Saturday to the ambassadors of Italy, Spain, and the Vatican in his Damascus-based office in Syria.

Hawatmeh called on the European leadership to "adopt an international peace conference in the Middle East under the auspices of the UN with both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the international entities participating."

As for the international meeting called for by US President Bush, Hawatmeh stated, "that meeting will be ambushed with land mines, and will result in an impasse." He ascribed that to the fact that Bush has called for annexation of the large Israeli settlements of the West Bank to Israel, avoiding any discussion of the major issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

Hawatmeh added that the Bush-recommended meeting lacks the mechanism to terminate the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, "and the meeting will not submit a political horizon for a comprehensive political solution".

For their part, the European ambassadors promised to report Hawatmeh's recommendations to their countries' leaders.