HIGHLIGHTS: Quartet & Arabs Discuss Arafat & Reoccupation of Palestinian Cities & Towns By Israel||Israeli Occupation Forces Briefly Enter Jericho Arresting A Palestinian Police Officer|| STORY: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said before a meeting of Middle East peace envoys in New York on Tuesday he was willing to consider a plan retaining Yasser Arafat as a symbolic leader of the Palestinian people. (Read photo caption)

Aides to the Palestinian president again rebuffed what they called foreign interference in their politics and called on the "quartet" envoys to press Israel to withdraw its forces from West Bank cities reoccupied last month.

Powell reiterated that the administration of President Bush wanted to see a new Palestinian leadership, but said in an interview for ABC's "Nightline" he could entertain the idea of having Arafat president "kicked upstairs" to a figurehead post.

Powell spoke before a New York meeting with European Union officials led by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations make up the Middle East "quartet," an informal coordinating group seeking an elusive common approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The officials will discuss during their one-day meeting Bush's demand Arafat be shunted aside and deep reform instituted in the Palestinian Authority as preconditions for progress on Palestinian statehood.

They will also assess Israel's reoccupation of seven West Bank cities and its curfew imposed over 700,000 Palestinians following back-to-back Palestinian Resistance bombings which killed 26 people in Jerusalem last month.

But the Europeans and the Arab world, while welcoming Bush's call for a Palestinian state, disagree with his view that Arafat must go and reject Washington's tolerance for Israel's military clampdown in areas of the West Bank where Palestinians were granted self-rule under interim peace deals in 1994-95.

ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES BRIEFLY ENTER JERICHO ARRESTING A PALESTINIAN POLICE OFFICER

Violence has abated in the past three weeks but the Israeli army says it is still uncovering bombing plots and has continued to round up suspects. An army spokesman said about half a dozen alleged militants were detained in the West Bank overnight.

Before dawn, six Israeli jeeps and a helicopter entered Jericho, the only West Bank city not under reoccupation, snatched an officer from Arafat's Force 17 security and left, Palestinian sources said.

EGYPTIAN INTELLIGENCE CHIEF BACK TO TERRITORIES

The Egyptian president will send his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman for talks in the next few days with top Israeli and Palestinian officials on how to end 21 months of violence, an Israeli diplomatic source said.

Mubarak decided to dispatch Suleiman after a telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday, the source said.

PHOTO CAPTION

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the eve of Middle East talks in New York on July 16, 2002 with other major mediators, offered Yasser Arafat a political future as a figurehead leader of the Palestinians. Powell said in a television interview broadcast on July 15, 2002 that he would be 'more than willing to consider' a proposal that Arafat remain in symbolic office above a Palestinian prime minister who would hold the executive power. Powell is seen here in a July 11, 2002 file photo. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)