World leaders past and present voiced firm support Monday for an unofficial Middle East peace plan shaped by regional "doves" but denounced as treason by both Israeli officials and Palestinian militants.

Head of the Palestinian delegation to the Geneva Initiative, Yasser Abed Rabbo (R), and head of the Israeli delegation, Yossi Beilin, shake hands during the launch of an unofficial Swiss sponsored Middle East peace plan, dubbed the Geneva Initiative, in Geneva Dec. 1, 2003.  [Reuters]

As its authors, self-proclaimed moderates from both sides of Palestinian-Israeli divide, launched the plan at a ceremony in Geneva, senior figures around the globe called it a ray of hope in one of the most intractable international conflicts.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken far too great a toll already. Both peoples have paid dearly in lives and livelihood in a war which both are losing," declared a statement from 58 former presidents, prime ministers and U.N. officials.

Hailed at the two-hour ceremony by former President Jimmy Carter as offering an end to bloodshed, the plan also won messages of support from King Mohammed of Morocco, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Bill Clinton, U.S. president from 1993 to 2001.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey dubbed it "a little light in the darkness." And at the United Nations in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the initiative had caught the imagination of both peoples.

"They should inspire in all the burning conviction that a settlement can be achieved," he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States welcomed peace efforts such as the one in Geneva but remained committed to the Bush administration's road map for the region.

"We think the road map is the way to make progress. Down the road of the road map, to abuse the metaphor, we get to the point where these big issues have to be discussed. We think it's worthwhile that people are already considering them, discussing and debating them in Israeli and Palestinian society."

At least 2,241 Palestinians and 836 Israelis have been killed since the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation in September 2000.

PALESTINIANS PROTEST

But underlining the difficulties ahead, thousands of Palestinians protested against the blueprint in refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, calling it a "sell-out" and branding its Palestinian supporters "traitors."

Palestinians chant slogans against the Geneva Accord at a gathering of groups opposed to the agreement in Gaza City, Dec. 1, 2003.  [AP]

The "Geneva Initiative" was co-authored by former Israeli government minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the now almost defunct 1993 Oslo peace accords, and former Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

It goes further than Oslo by mandating the removal of most Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas and splitting Jerusalem, occupied in 1967 but annexed unilaterally later by Israel, into the capitals of Israel and a new Palestinian state.

Its Palestinian negotiators accepted wording waiving the claims of millions of people to return to lands in Israel from which they fled or were driven in the 1948 Middle East war.

Although also reviled by the right-wing Israeli government, the plan seems to be gaining ground in the country. A poll on Monday showed 31.2 percent approved, up from 25 percent in October. Opposition dropped from 54 percent to 37.7 percent.

"The only alternative to this initiative is sustained and growing violence," Carter told an audience of about 1,000, people, who included many Israelis and Palestinians specially flown in for the launch.

Fellow Nobel peace prize winners Nelson Mandela of South Africa, via a video link, and Poland's Lech Walesa in person joined Carter in addressing the ceremony in the city where the plan was negotiated in secret over two years.

Among the 58 signatories of the statement of support were ex-presidents Mikhail Gorbachev of the ex-Soviet Union, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, F.W. de Klerk of South Africa and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico.

The plan's roll-out came amid an upsurge of diplomatic efforts to halt the violence, but it also coincided with fresh bloodshed as Israeli forces killed four Palestinians and arrested 30 more in the West Bank earlier Monday.

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