Rice seeks wide Middle East truce to restart talks

DEAD SEA, Jordan (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday to broaden their fragile Gaza ceasefire as Arab nations urged her to press Israel to ease restrictions in the occupied West Bank.

In a move likely to please Washington, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Rice he had reached a "dead end" in talks on forming a coalition with Hamas Islamists, whose control of the Palestinian Authority has dimmed hopes for peacemaking.

"In the past few days we have come to the conclusion that the doors are locked," Abbas said, without specifying what he would do next. An aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said Abbas would take "unprecedented political steps."

On a mission to revive peace talks, Rice met Abbas in the West Bank town of Jericho and later went to Jerusalem to see Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, urging them both to build on a truce that took hold in the Gaza Strip at the weekend.

"It is quite fragile and we would like to see it consolidated and extended," Rice said after meeting Olmert.

Hours later, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 16-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank, police and a clinic said. The Israeli army said a Palestinian threw explosives at the troops, who then shot him in the lower part of the body.

Both Olmert and Abbas support widening the ceasefire to the West Bank, but it was unclear whether Rice's intervention meant agreement was near.

"There is now a little opening and we will see if we can help the Palestinians and the Israelis push forward," Rice said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the two sides would work on solidifying the truce, cautioning that "some people out there want to use the ceasefire as a timeout to allow terrorists to rearm and upgrade their strategic capabilities."

Rice said the United States was also seeking to find ways to help boost Abbas's security forces but that there needed to be U.S. Congressional approval for such a move. Arab states were also prepared to help, she said.

Thursday's visit was Rice's seventh to Israel and the Palestinian territories in nearly two years but she has failed to achieve any major breakthroughs so far.

Rice herself played down any expectations this time. "This is the kind of thing that takes time ... you don't expect great leaps forward," she said.

ARAB PRESSURE

After Jerusalem, Rice met ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council as well as Egypt and Jordan in the nearby Dead Sea in Jordan to discuss the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iraq, Somalia and other issues.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters the Arab ministers had urged Rice to "encourage Israel to soften the measures that they have been applying at least in the West Bank".

Citing security concerns, Israel maintains a network of roadblocks in the territory that restricts Palestinian travel between West Bank cities. Palestinians accuse Israel of collective punishment.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said there was no longer any room to avoid addressing the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which affected everyone in the region.

"There has to be complete coordination between us because the dangers that face our region are grave," he said.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a final peace deal ended without agreement in 2000 and were followed by the start of a Palestinian uprising. Prospects for reviving talks declined further after Hamas won Palestinian elections in January.

But the atmosphere has changed since the Gaza truce and a speech by Olmert this week pledging to reach out for peace if Palestinians ended violence and met a string of conditions.

Aboul Gheit, who said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may soon visit Cairo, said he was encouraged by Olmert's speech and this could lead to some movement in the peace process.

Abbas has tried to form a unity government with Hamas or get the group to agree to Israeli and Western demands to recognise the Jewish state, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace accords.

The collapse of talks could mean Abbas tries to appoint a government more acceptable to the United States, which has spearheaded a Western aid blockade.

An end to unity government talks, though, could complicate efforts to extend the ceasefire and broker an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli soldier captured by militants in a raid out of the Gaza Strip in June.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi and Wafa Amr and by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem)

Source

About headlines and content that has changed after it was added to this site - see disclaimer here

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.