Israel must shoulder its responsibility in the two-state solution which is part of the Road Map peace plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday.

Abbas made the remarks at a brief press conference after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the presidential residence.

"The Road Map involves some details, including the two-state solution, which envisages a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Arab lands," he said, adding that "If that is the case, Israel will certainly normalize its relations with 22 Arab nations."

The Road Map plan was proposed by former US President George W. Bush in 2002 and in April 2003, the United Nations published the long-awaited peace Road Map designed by the Middle East Quartet to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It calls on the Palestinians to renounce violence and the Jewish state to halt its settlement on occupied lands.

But the plan was stopped five months later due to violence between Israel and Palestinian militant groups.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that he will negotiate with the Palestinians for peace, but fell short of mentioning the two-state plan to date.

On April 1, the hawkish Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel is not bound by the Annapolis conference, while stressing that the "only one document that binds us" is the Road Map peace plan.

However, the plan, whose total name is "A performance-based roadmap to a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," does involve a second stage of two states.

Lieberman has argued that his government should carry out the plan step by step, rather than go straight to the negotiations for the final status issues.

"A mechanism needs to be set up to carry out the Road Map in order to get the whole issue back on the 'land for peace' track," Abbas said.