Two 16-year-old girls, one Palestinian, one Israeli, quizzed Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Middle East policy Friday.

"It was interesting to know what the official U.S. position is," said Hamutal Blanc, the Israeli, after attending the event with other children from the Seeds of Peace summer camp, which brings together teenagers from conflict zones around the world.

"I expected more from him," said Yafa Ebrrighith from the West Bank city of Hebron. "He's running away from answering the direct questions."

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The pair and 22 of their campmates met with Khalilzad in Manhattan on Friday, asking him with questions on nuclear disarmament, the American stance on Hamas and the effectiveness of the U.N.four months ago was the Bush administration's top diplomat to Iraq

The youths, who also included representatives from Jordan, Egypt, the U.S., India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, spend three weeks of the summer in Maine with teenagers from nations with which theirs is in conflict.

More than 450 students participate each year in the program, which was founded in 1993 by journalist John Wallach.

Campers are chosen by their governments based on academic performance and leadership ability, and without regard to social or economic background, according to the camp's Web site, and are challenged to form a bond of trust with campers "from the other side".

For the campers, Khalilzad said, the issue has to be how to transcend these differences and live in a mutual respect environment. "The teenagers must form relationships across sectarian and ethnic lines ... to achieve all of the potential that their societies have," he said.

Even once those connections have been made, maintaining friendships once the summer is over can prove difficult. For Ebrrighith and Blanc, the rising conflict meant they lost touch after they returned home from their first session at the camp.

But now that they have reconnected, they said, they plan to begin speaking together in the conflict zone, talking to other youngsters about possible nonviolent solutions.

It is, they say, something they can agree on.

There are nonviolent options of solving this, because everyone is tired of what's going on, Blanc said, to which Ebrrighith added "Violence leads to violence. It's a circle. So we're going to try another kind of resistance."