It is a plan for lasting peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The roadmap was announced by the Bush administration on March 14, 2003, after several months of working with Russian, European Union, and United Nations (UN) officials to develop the plan, which calls for a permanent two-state solution. The roadmap outlines specific, actionable steps to be taken by each side in the conflict. The U.S. State Department described it as a “performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields.” In announcing the roadmap, President George W. Bush (1946-) called for an end to the recent wave of violence (intifada) in the Middle East, for authoritative Palestinian leadership, and for Israeli readiness to comply. He asked for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to contribute to and discuss the roadmap, and he repeated his call for “all parties in the Middle East to abandon old hatreds and to meet their responsibilities for peace.” The plan, the last phase of which was to have been completed in 2004–05, foundered amid the daily violence of the Second Intifada, but was given new promise in May 2005 when Palestinian and Israeli leaders met in Egypt to discuss peace.