U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan plans this month to visit Israel and the Palestinian West Bank to discuss Middle East peace proposals and attend the opening of a new Holocaust museum, U.N. envoys said. The visit on March 15-16, the first by Annan in nearly four years, will include talks with President President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli officials. The trip was timed to the opening of the new Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem. Annan has been active in pushing a road map for Middle East peace drafted by the quartet of advisers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United States. Late on Friday, the secretary-general and his wife Nane came to a farewell party for Nasser al-Kidwa, the U.N. Palestinian envoy for decades who is now foreign minister in the new Abbas government. Several hundred diplomats stood in line for about an hour to greet al-Kidwa, his French wife Christine and Somaia Barghouti, his deputy at the United Nations. Among the invited guests were Israel's U.N. Ambassador Daniel Gillerman, unusual at a Palestinian gathering and to many a hopeful sign for the peace process. --MORE 1159 Local Time 0859 GMT
