Ministers from ministers from 11 states attending a Mediterranean Forum meeting in the southern Spanish city of Alicante on Saturday called for the launching of a 'new and credible' Mideast peace process, a diplomatic source said.
In an "Alicante Declaration" the countries, which did not include Israel, also called for measures to defuse the current tension in the region and backed a mooted Spanish plan for a Mideast peace conference, similar to one which Madrid hosted in 1991.
Washington has received the idea coolly and Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said it was too early to talk about fixing a date. Israel did not take part in the meeting.
Earlier this week Moratinos told the Spanish parliament that current tensions required a major initiative, along the lines of the 1991 conference, which drew together Israel and Arab states under the aegis of the United States and the Soviet Union.
The conference set out a framework for a Middle East peace process and opened the way to the 1993 Oslo accords on Palestinian self-rule.
Saturday's declaration proposed to "reactivate and revise" the peace "roadmap."
It also demanded the freeing of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian prisoners the transfer from Israel of tax receipts to the Palestinian Authority, as well as an "adequate balance" between security and the movement of good and people in frontier zones.
Moratinos, a former EU envoy to the region, said it was time such measures were drawn up to "put an end to the tragedy" of the Middle East.
The forum agreed that Mediterranean countries needed to engage in efforts to speed a solution to the conflict.
French Minister for European Affairs Catherine Colonna said that there needed to be an "implication of Mediterranean states in the seeking of a solution to the Middle East (conflict)."
"The situation has doubtless never been as dangerous owing to the absence of political perspectives" in the region, Colonna added, calling for "urgent responses" to what she termed "the degradation of the situation in the region."
The grouping, known as FOROMED, is a consultative body associated with the so-called Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean process, a framework for political, economic and social relations in the region.
Member states, which sent foreign ministers or their deputies to the weekend meeting, comprise Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Tunisia. Libya has observer status.