Israel has killed the road map peace plan for the Middle East with apparent U.S. acquiescence, a U.N. human rights investigator said on Thursday, triggering a strong rebuttal from the Jewish state. "The road map is dead. Israel has killed it," South African law professor John Dugard told a General Assembly committee. "The world is looking to the United States for leadership in this region, and the world is simply not getting it," said Dugard, who monitors the Palestinian territories for the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission. His remarks came as a gravely ill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed to be rushed from the West Bank to a French hospital for treatment, casting a cloud of uncertainty over the Middle East political landscape. The United States is part of the quartet of international mediators that laid out the road map to Middle East peace, along with Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. But the other quartet members quietly accuse Washington of encouraging Israeli policies that violate the plan. --More 0041 Local Time 2141 GMT
