WASHINGTON, June 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. President George W. Bush took a step closer Thursday to publicly disclose the next step towards his vision for Middle East peace by meeting here with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

Bush has twinned support for Israeli's hardline policy against Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority with backing the creation of a Palestinian state, A public statement by Bush was expected to map the way forward in a public statement as early as next week.

The Saudi official was the latest in a parade of regional leaders who have come here in the last month hoping to shape U.S. policy, including Jordan's King, Egypt's President, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush "enjoyed" his 20-minute meeting with the prince but emphasized that the President's consultations on the volatile region were not over.

"The President will be discussing various ideas about Middle East peace with members of his administration and members of the administration will continue their outreach to other nations in a multilateral fashion," said Fleischer.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was to meet with Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath, a senior Arafat aide, here this week, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

The Foreign Minister had been expected to underscore Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz's concerns about Bush's "recent negative stands vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority and its leader," a Saudi official told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I was very pleased with what I heard from the President," the visiting minister told reporters after the meeting, revealing that he had delivered a letter to Bush from the Crown Prince, and indicated he would answer more questions on Friday.

After meeting with Sharon on Monday, Bush declared that the time was not ripe for a proposed ministerial-level conference on the region in the coming months because "no-one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government."

Asked what Bush and his guest discussed, Fleischer replied: "They exchanged a variety of ideas about how to move forward, and the President enjoyed the visit."

Bush "believes that Saudi Arabia is committed to a meaningful, lasting peace process in the Middle East that includes a providing security for Israel as well as a hopeful and helpful future for the Palestinian people," he said.

The Saudi plan discussed at that meeting includes the Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas, deployment of an international peacekeeping force, reconstruction of damaged Palestinian areas, renunciation of violence, talks on a political settlement and an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas, reports news agencies.

Bush is preparing to unveil, probably next week, a framework for negotiations to rebuild Palestinian institutions to establish a Palestinian state, reviving political negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and improving security “to end Palestinian attacks against Israeli targets,” reports news agencies.

The White House distanced itself from Powell's comments in an Arabic-language newspaper that Bush believes that such an entity "may be necessary" to eventually creating a permanent state.

Bush "knows that it may be necessary to have a provisional state, an interim step; it may take several steps to get there," the London-based al-Hayat daily quoted Powell as saying.

Fleischer dismissed Powell's comments as merely "reflecting" advice from world leaders on the Middle East, and made clear that the U.S. leader had not signed on to the proposal.

Powell, further in the Al-Hayat article on the prospects of a Palestinian state, commented, "But to create this kind of provisional state, it has to be a state that has good governance, that there's transparency, that there's no corruption, that the security organizations work well."

Meanwhile, on his way to a meeting of G8 nations' foreign ministers in Canada, Powell stressed to reporters aboard his plane that the idea was not new and took pains to say Bush was only "examining" the idea.

"I did not say there will be a state. I said these are the ideas that are out there," he noted. "I'm just trying to lay out to you the range of ideas that are out there, the issues that the President is examining."

Among the other loose threads is whether Washington plans to go ahead with a proposed ministerial level conference on the Middle East.

Bush, meeting at Camp David with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday, said the conditions for holding such a meeting were absent "because no one has confidence" in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's revamped cabinet.

But on Wednesday, June 12, Fleischer said U.S. officials were "working through" logistical issues and obstacles to holding the conference, as planned, in the coming months.