Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal made a whirlwind tour of Egypt, Syria and Jordan as he pressed on with inter-Arab consultations ahead of key talks on the Middle East crisis.On his arrival here Prince Saud went straight into talks with King Abdullah II, Jordanian officials said Wednesday.Earlier in Damascus he met President Bashar al-Assad to discuss the "international community's peace proposals," the official Syrian news agency SANA said.

And in Egypt he met President Hosni Mubarak at his northeast Cairo residence as part of consultations to calm the situation in the Palestinian territories, sources close to the presidency said.

Neither Prince Saud nor his interlocutors made any statement after their talks.

The prince is set to join Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts Ahmed Maher and Marwan Moasher in talks in New York on July 16 with foreign ministers from the diplomatic "quartet" on the Middle East -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.

He has already visited Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates as part of his whirlwind consultations ahead of Arab League meetings on the Middle East in Cairo Friday.

Representatives of 11 members of the League will attend meetings of the follow-up committees for the Arab peace initiative and for the other decisions adopted at the Beirut Arab summit in March 2002.

The initiative, based on Saudi proposals and adopted at the Beirut summit, offers Israel a normalisation of relations with the Arab states in return for its full withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967.

The Jordanian foreign minister told the kingdom's Petra news agency Tuesday that Amman would repeat at the UN meeting its call for a framework and timetable for a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Saudi diplomat's tour coincides with a flurry of other top-level contacts.

King Abdullah has just returned from a visit to Russia where he briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Middle East and Iraq, warning that the situation in the area was approaching crisis point.

He is also set to meet President George W. Bush during a private visit to the United States later this month. On his way he will stop over in Paris for talks with French President Jacques Chirac on July 26.

Bush meanwhile telephoned Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday to discuss the Middle East.

"The president discussed with each of them the importance of pursuing the path to peace in the Middle East" as well as the various parties' "responsibilities," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Egypt sent its intelligence director General Omar Soleiman as a special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, where he met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Sharon.

But Damascus sounded a note of pessimism ahead of Prince Saud's arrival, warning that the quartet's New York talks were unlikely to make progress.

"This will be the third such meeting in two months but there is no cause for optimism. The United States is only interested in minor issues such as reforms within the Palestinian Authority," the ruling Baath party's daily said.

PHOTO CAPTION
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal made a whirlwind tour of Egypt, Syria and Jordan as he pressed on with inter-Arab consultations ahead of key talks on the Middle East crisis.