The Israeli and Palestinian authors of a private Middle East peace plan presented their proposals to Secretary of State Colin Powell Friday but were unable to alter the Bush administration's approach to peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians.

"It was a very good meeting," Powell said. "We welcome other ideas."

However, Powell said, the US-backed "road map" for peacemaking still had "primacy" in the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

And a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said that blueprint, which would establish a Palestinian state in 2005, would not be altered as a result of Powell's meeting with former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, his Palestinian negotiating partner.

Ereli also said there were no plans for a follow-up meeting, although contact at some level could not be ruled out.

Powell, meanwhile, conferred with King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country is at peace with Israel and wants to see Israel negotiate terms with the Palestinians.

Describing their plan as an unprecedented "endgame" that complements, rather than conflicts with, the "road map," Beilin and Abed Rabbo, who is on the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, said the contacts with the Bush administration would continue.

"We were encouraged," Abed Rabbo told reporters. "This is a very encouraging beginning."

They talked with reporters after meeting with Powell for 20 to 25 minutes and then, for an hour, with Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and Elliott Abrams, who works on Middle East issues at the National Security Council.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was expected to have met with Beilin and Abed Rabbo, but Beilin said the meeting was postponed for scheduling reasons.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rejected the unofficial peace plan, and his government criticized Powell for meeting with the drafters.

Reuters adds: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in contrast to a cautious US welcome, gave an unofficial Middle East peace plan effusive support, saying it complemented the American-backed "road map" settlement.

After meeting on Friday with the Israeli and Palestinian authors of the plan, known as the Geneva Accord, Annan called the proposals "positive and praiseworthy" and "consistent and compatible" with the road map, a UN statement said.

Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister, told reporters Annan promised to raise the Geneva Accord at the next meeting of the "Quartet" of Middle East advisers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.