Egypt on Sunday proposed a Middle East peace plan based on fixing in advance the borders and other details of a Palestinian state before setting up negotiations to turn the concept into a reality on the ground.

The approach is a radical departure from the one which has dominated Middle East diplomacy for most of the past 15 years, which was based on persuading Israelis and Palestinians to build confidence gradually through small steps.

The Egyptian idea is similar to the concept proposed by King Abdullah of Jordan in an interview in the latest edition of Time magazine. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Jordan earlier on Sunday to coordinate plans with King Abdullah.

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Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit gave details of the new initiative at a news conference after talks with visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

Aboul Gheit said: "The necessary thinking which everyone must focus on ... is on how to conceptualise what is referred to as the endgame. The endgame is the Palestinian state."

"If we agree on a Palestinian state, its borders and its parameters, then we can deal from there, through negotiations, to try and achieve this aim," he added.

The most recent Middle East document accepted by the main parties - the "road map" released in 2003 - leaves details of the Palestinian state to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

But the road map, which is backed by the United States, United Nations and the European Union, has not produced any significant progress towards regional peace.

In his interview with Time, King Abdullah said peace negotiations would be helpful in the short term. But he added: "We want to jump ahead to something tangible. We need to get to the point where people want to sign on the dotted line. We want to move to a two-state solution, but we are not going to go back and forth with lawyers until we get there."

Egypt and Jordan have been pushing a peace initiative by the Cairo-based Arab League, which in July declared the peace process dead and begged the UN Security Council to revive it.

They were reacting initially to the outbreak of war between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla movement Hezbollah, which exposed Arab governments friendly towards Washington to accusations that they were impotent against Israel.

The European Union, taking advantage of the leverage it has gained by deploying peacekeepers in south Lebanon, has also promised to work harder for Middle East peace.

The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the EU should persuade the United States to update and relaunch the "road map" and should seek new peace talks based on a return to Israel's 1967 borders, except for agreed land swaps.

A return to its 1967 borders remains anathema to Israel, which has said it wants to keep major settlement blocks in the occupied West Bank under any deal. Solana said Israel's main ally, U.S. President George W. Bush, had said more than once that Israel had to end the occupation that started in 1967.

Moratinos said there was no need to change the principles for peace, such as the "land for peace" principle accepted at the peace conference which Spain hosted in 1991.

"Of course, land for peace is the only way that will solve the Palestinian issue, the Lebanese issue ... Shaba farms, or the Syrian issue, with the Golan heights," he said.

After the talks in Jordan on Sunday, Egypt and Jordan urged the international community to work for a speedy resumption of Middle East peace talks, officials said.

Both leaders agreed at the brief summit in Amman that an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict could come about only by a comprehensive settlement based on past UN resolutions as well as on the basis of land for peace.

Mubarak and Abdullah - key U.S. allies in the Mideast and Israel's only Arab peace partners, urged the Palestinians and Israelis to resume peace talks as soon as possible and said efforts to form a new unity government between the militant Hamas group and more moderate factions were critical.

"Reviving the Palestinian-Israeli peace process" was a top priority, they said.

This included "both sides returning to the negotiating table in the soonest possible time," they said.

Mubarak flew into the Jordanian capital on an unexpected visit Sunday. Accompanied by his foreign minister and his chief of intelligence, Mubarak held a closed-door meeting with Abdullah and top aides at an Amman hilltop palace.

Both leaders reaffirmed their support for moderate Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and said the formation of a unity government with the ruling Hamas "would allow the Palestinians to be a powerful and effective peace partner," according to a royal palace statement issued following the talks.

Abbas said Sunday he was prepared to meet unconditionally with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, possibly paving the way for the resumption of peace talks. Israel said it would work to bring about the meeting soon.

Israel and the West have been boycotting Hamas since it won legislative elections in January, but they consider Abbas an acceptable channel for peace talks.

Abbas, a moderate who leads the rival Fatah Party, thinks a so-called national unity government would force Hamas to soften its anti-Israel ideology.

Olmert began calling last week publicly for talks with Abbas after shelving plans for a large-scale, unilateral pullback from parts of the West Bank.