HIGHLIGHTS: No Details About Topics Discussed at the Al-FaisalPowell Meeting||Shaath Stresses to Powell Need to Set Timetable to Palestinian Statehood||Palestinian New Security Chief Promises Crackdown on So-called 'Terror'||EU to Add Three Palestinian Groups to So-called 'Terror List'||Gathering Storm on the IsraeliLebanese Border||UN Expert Accuses Israel of War Crimes|| STORY: Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed a possible interim Palestinian state and other peace ideas with Arab leaders Friday as U.S. officials cautiously welcomed a promise by the Palestinians' new security chief to curb attacks on Israelis. (Read photo caption)

With President Bush expected to outline his peace proposals soon, Powell had a "warm and useful" 40-minute meeting with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Powell's spokesman said, but neither side would provide details.

At a later meeting with Nabil Shaath, a top adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Powell "was listening," Shaath said. "And I understood that this was the opportunity for the Palestinians to communicate to the secretary all their visions, all their ideas, so that he can communicate that to the president."

Shaath said he told Powell that a deadline for political progress toward a state is needed because "without a timeline, procrastination can come in."

As for the idea of an interim Palestinian state, Shaath said the most important thing is for any state to include the lands Israel gained in the 1967 war. "That is a very important requirement," he said.

THE PRESIDENT'S MIDEAST PROPOSALS

Bush's aides say he is considering a proposal for an interim, or provisional, state for Palestinians on the land that Palestinians now hold, which comprises roughly 40 percent of the West Bank and two-thirds of Gaza.

The Boston Globe, in a report for Saturday editions, quoted Palestinian officials as saying the U.S. plan would leave provisional Palestine's borders and capital unresolved, but it would have the right to conduct foreign relations, sign treaties and join the United Nations.

The plan also calls for a halt to new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and control over Jerusalem to be decided over three years, the Globe said. The Palestinian officials were not identified.

Hassan Abdel Rahman, the ranking Palestinian official in the United States, would not comment on the report Friday night but said the Palestinians wanted the borders and capital questions resolved.

Powell floated the idea of a provisional state this week, saying it would provide the Palestinians with hope for the future and thus might help end violence. Bush's aides called Powell's statements premature.

NEW PALESTINIAN SECURITY CHIEF PROMISES CRACKDOWN ON SO-CALLED TERROR

U.S. officials said they are waiting to see if promises of a crackdown on terror by Arafat's new interior minister, who is in charge of maintaining security, would be matched by Palestinian action.

The Arafat appointee, Gen. Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, said in an Associated Press interview Friday that he is determined to neutralize the militias attacking Israelis but was vague on how he would do it.

EU TO ADD THREE PALESTINIAN GROUPS TO SO-CALLED 'TERROR LIST'

EU sources in Brussels have meanwhile said that the European Union will put the military wing of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and two other Palestinian groups on its list of banned terrorist organizations next week.
The sources said the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed Fatah youth group that has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings inside Israel, would join an EU list of groups whose assets must be frozen in all 15-member states.

Ministers would also include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed responsibility for killing of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi last year, and the smaller Palestine Liberation Front, the sources said.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the military wing of the radical Islamic movement Hamas, the Ezzedin al-Qasem Brigades, are already on the list, created last December in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

GATHERING STORM ON THE LEBANESE ISRAELI BORDER

Meanwhile, on Israel's troubled border with Lebanon, a build-up of armed Hezbollah fighters is under way in southern Lebanon, diplomatic sources reported.

An Israeli diplomat said 9,000 missiles, rockets and artillery shells had been stockpiled in southern Lebanon and were capable of reaching targets in the northern quarter of Israel, as far south as Haifa and Hadera. The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that Iranian revolutionary guards were in the area from which Israel withdrew in May 2000, under intense international pressure. The Lebanese army has not moved in to assert control, the diplomat said, which has left the area under command of Hezbollah, which is on the State Department's list of terror organizations.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged President Bush at their White House meeting Monday to mount an international campaign to undercut Hezbollah's influence and to wrest the area from its fighters' control. A senior official in Sharon's party said the prime minister told Bush that southern Lebanon "now has become the greatest threat to Israel."

UN INVESTIGATOR ACCUSES ISRAEL OF WAR CRIMES

Israel's policy of building settlements in Palestinian territories and destroying Arab homes and farmland is a war crime, a United Nations investigator said Friday.

"Israel has used the current crisis to consolidate its occupation" of Palestinian areas, said Miloon Kothari, the housing expert of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Kothari, an Indian architect who visited Israel and Palestinian territories earlier this year, told reporters, "The serial and deliberate destruction of homes and property constitutes a war crime under international law."

The building of new Jewish settlements is "incendiary and provocative" and settlers are "free to indulge in violence and confiscate land," he said.

Kothari cited international accords like the Geneva Conventions on warfare, which govern the behavior of occupying powers.

Israel has built more than 100 Jewish settlements - home to about 200,000 Israelis - on land conquered in the 1967 Middle East war and is continuing construction. It claims the territory it seized is disputed, rather than occupied and that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

In a 27-page report, Kothari said Israel claimed that settlement expansion was necessary because of "natural" population growth. But while settler numbers have risen by 12 percent a year, the Israeli population has been growing by just 2 percent a year, he said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Secretary of State Colin Powell greets Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal prior to their meeting at the State Department in Washington Friday, June 14, 2002 to discuss the Mideast situation. (AP Photo/Joe Marquette)