UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (AFP) - Gloomy news about Iraq and the Middle East peace process on Wednesday overshadowed the second day of the UN's annual gathering of world leaders.
The diplomatic quartet behind the foundering "roadmap" for Mideast peace said no progress had been made in the ambitious blueprint for a settlement with Israel to create a Palestinian state by next year.
Meanwhile a surge of new violence in Iraq and a British hostage's desperate plea for his life underlined the depth of international crises facing the United Nations, which is struggling to find its way in the 21st century.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, representing the European Union, met for around 90 minutes on the Middle East.
The so-called quartet, meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, offered a grim picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and declined to hold a press conference after their talks.
"The situation on the ground for both Palestinians and Israelis remains extremely difficult and no significant progress has been achieved on the roadmap," they said in a statement.
Their meeting came just hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew herself up in Jerusalem, killing two Israeli border guards.
In Iraq, at least 20 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded while a video posted on an Islamist website claimed to show a kidnapped British engineer pleading for his life. His two colleagues were beheaded this week.
Annan had hoped this year's two-week session, which has brought nearly 100 heads of state and government to the UN's New York headquarters, would focus on reforming the world body.
He has argued that the United Nations is at a "fork in the road" since the Iraq war, trying to find a way to reach a consensus in a world where the United States is the lone superpower.
But the US war in Iraq and President George W. Bush's broader campaign against terrorism dominated much of the discussion over the first two days.
US ally Pakistan on Wednesday warned that an "iron curtain" was falling between the West and the Islamic world because of a widespread belief that Muslims were not being treated fairly in international disputes.
"The major powers of the West have yet to show movement by seriously trying to resolve internationally recognised disputes affecting the Muslim world," he said.
"The tragedy of Palestine is an open wound inflicted on the psyche of every Muslim. It generates anger and resentment across the Islamic world," Musharraf said.
"Action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic world," he said.
The United States and Britain also came in for especially scathing criticism from Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, long a thorn in the side of Washington and London.
In a sign of the lingering ill will toward the two allies, Mugabe won applause in the General Assembly when he ripped Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a speech dripping with sarcasm and ridicule.
"Iraq today has become a vast inferno created by blatant and completely illegal and defiant acts of aggression by the United States, Britain and their allies," Mugabe said.
"We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that 'There is but one political god, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet,'" he said.