Assistant Secretary of State William Burns was preparing the ground for the most concerted international peace drive in the region since the US-brokered Camp David talks collapsed in mid-2000. Palestinians rose up against Israel soon afterward.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is due in Israel and the Palestinian territories later this week for the first time in 13 months to build on Wednesday’s swearing-in of reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told reporters he was seeking a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on implementing the road map presented by the United States and three other international mediators last week.

Sharon has said he would welcome talks with Abbas, a former negotiator he has met in the past. Israeli government sources said a meeting was likely after Powell’s visit around May 10.

In talks with Burns late yesterday, Sharon ruled out any cease-fire with Palestinian militant groups and called for the destruction of their infrastructures, a senior Israeli government source said.

Burns preceded Powell to glean remarks from each side on the road map, which calls for an end to violence in a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising, a freeze in Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza and a Palestinian state by 2005.

Near the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian youth during stone-throwing demonstrations, witnesses said. The army said troops shot at two youths, one who climbed onto an armored vehicle and another who threw a petrol bomb. A spokeswoman said she did not know if they were hit.

Burns said US President George W. Bush and Powell envisaged steps that “Israel can consider in its own self-interest to reinforce important steps on the Palestinian side to act decisively against terror and violence.

“Obviously the humanitarian situation for Palestinians is a very difficult one, and we very much hope that concrete steps can be taken to ease that,” Burns told reporters after talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

Burns was due to meet Abbas and his Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan today. He will not see Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom the United States and Israel have sought to sideline over his failure to move against militants.

Israel reoccupied most of the West Bank last year after bomb attacks in Israeli cities and maintains tight travel restrictions on Palestinians. It also often launches raids to detain militants, operations that have caused civilian deaths.

Sharon’s right-wing coalition says the road map does not put sufficient onus on Palestinians to disarm and jail militants before Israel pulls troops out of Palestinian cities or suspends settlement building on occupied territory.

In a blow to Israeli left-wingers, the dovish leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Amram Mitzna, announced his resignation, citing backstabbing by party rivals. Mitzna lost to Sharon in Israel’s January election after urging unilateral Israeli troop pullbacks and removal of some settlements.

Citing backstabbing by Labour rivals, Mitzna said: “Today I am returning the mandate I received from members of the Labour Party and I will resign as head of the Labour Party.”

“I came to fight for peacemaking, for the social image of Israel. I believe today, as I did nine months ago, that it is possible to lead Israel to a different reality,” he said.

But he told a news conference “in the current circumstances, it is impossible to lead the Labour Party”.