The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee has called for setting up a timetable for the implementation of the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan.

The PLO made the appeal in a statement issued Sunday night after a meeting chaired by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

The PLO executive committee said in the statement "the situation is becoming unbearable due to the absence of international monitoring to the implementation of the peace plan."

Without the international monitoring, "the roadmap peace plan would be similar to unimplemented agreements signed with Israel in the past few years, and it would collapse," it said.

The Palestinian leadership also warned that the continuation of such a situation "would lead to serious results and would spread an atmosphere of despair and frustration among the Palestinians."

"Such a situation needs an urgent international intervention by the Quartet committee and the international community to save this exceptional chance to make real and tangible progress in the peace process," said the PLO statement.

The roadmap peace plan, worked out by the Quartet committee comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, calls for reciprocal steps from Israel and the Palestinians to end their bloody conflict and envisions an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

(Xinhua News Agency   August 4, 2003)