UNITED NATIONS - Painting a bleak picture of the Middle East crisis, a senior U.N. official said Israelis and Palestinians needed a bridge back to peace negotiations, which only outside mediators could provide.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. special Middle East envoy, briefed the 15-member Security Council late on Wednesday, hours before attending a four-party meeting in Washington with officials from the United States, Russia and the European Union.

"What is very evident now is that it will be incredibly difficult for the parties to move forward with mutual confidence without help from a third party," he told reporters. He said this could be the United States or any one of the other members of the quartet or all four as a body.

"The situation now is so grave that it necessitates consultations in Washington," he said.

Roed-Larsen as well as Middle East envoys, Andrei Vdovin of Russia and Miguel Angel Moratinos of the European Union, were expected to press U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns that the United States resume high-level mediation in the conflict.

The Bush administration decided earlier this month to suspend the mission of the U.S. envoy, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni.

Without mentioning Israel by name, Roed-Larsen said an opportunity was missed for a truce when there was a major decline in violence in the weeks after a Dec. 16 speech in which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat urged an end to armed attacks on Israel.

But "unfortunately at this juncture," new conditions were placed on the talks "and I believe that an opportunity was squandered," he said.

More than 900 Palestinians have been killed and 17,000 injured in 16 months of violence. During the same period, 239 Israelis were killed and more than 2,400 were injured.

"We face a situation that is steadily deteriorating, with a loss of mutual confidence and a corresponding rise in bitterness on both sides, leading to a sense of hopelessness and despair," Roed-Larsen told a closed council session.

"A peace process can only be driven by hope -- and the light of hope has been extinguished," he said, according to his speaking notes.

The Security Council, at the initiative of Syria, has agreed to regular Middle East briefings, which began with Roed-Larsen. Diplomats said the United States had discouraged such sessions in the past.

It also issued its first press statement on the Middle East in months, which "deplored the loss of life and suffering of the civilian population on all sides" in what it called "unprecedented levels of violence."

"The destructive and dangerous cycle of violence should be immediately stopped," the statement said. "The only way forward was in the return of dialogue and negotiation."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has dismissed Arafat as "irrelevant" to peacemaking and kept the Palestinian leader penned in the West Bank town of Ramallah for more than a month, a situation criticized by all council members, except the United States, participants at the meeting reported.

Roed-Larsen, after condemning attacks by Palestinians and assassinations by Israel, said Arafat's virtual house arrest weakened his "ability to fulfill the requirements set by the international community." Nampa-Reuters