ALICANTE, Spain - Top diplomats from 11 countries bordering the Mediterranean will produce a new batch of proposals for reviving the Middle East peace process at a two-day meeting in Spain beginning Friday, a leading Spanish diplomat said.

The annual informal gathering of the so-called Foromed group comes after Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, a leading European voice on the Middle East, said Tuesday he felt the road map peace plan no longer provided the answers to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He urged the European Union to take the lead in pushing for a fresh approach.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said Moratinos was overly pessimistic and expressed their continuing faith in the road map.

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The Foromed group will issue a closing declaration Saturday "offering a new vision of how things are going in the Middle East," said a Spanish foreign ministry diplomat involved in organizing the meeting. He stressed that the declaration would not oppose the road map.

"It's not that the road map is of no use, but it's not enough. A lot more
needs to be done, more proposals need to be made," said the diplomat, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because ministry ground rules forbid him to be identified.

Described as a group of "like-minded" countries, Foromed was formed on the initiative of Egypt and France in 1994 to boost political, economic and cultural cooperation in the Mediterranean region long hindered by the Middle East conflict. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are represented in the group.

The Spanish official did not rule out the possibility that Foromed would call for the staging of another Middle East summit along the lines of the Madrid summit in 1991, as has been mooted by Moratinos.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, meanwhile, is touring the Middle East to sound out countries on reviving the peace process.

Joining Moratinos at the meeting in the Spanish Mediterranean port city will be the foreign ministers for Egypt, Greece, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Portugal and Turkey. Algeria, France and Tunisia were to send state secretaries.

The group will hold a working dinner late Friday followed by a meeting Saturday before Moratinos presents the declaration to reporters at an early-afternoon news conference.

Moratinos has long offered to have Spain play a role in resolving the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but has had little response from either side in recent years.

Madrid hosted a landmark conference in 1991, bringing together Israel and many of its Arab enemies for the first time. Those talks helped lay the foundation for the Oslo peace process, which resulted in the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.

Moratinos argues that any new talks should involve Syria - a longtime foe of Washington - and that Iran's nuclear program would also need to be addressed at such a conference.