/ 15 January 2007

Rice, Olmert plan three-way meeting with Abbas

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed on Monday to hold a three-way meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on reviving peace talks, an Olmert adviser said. The adviser, Miri Eisin, said the three would convene for talks in the ''near future''.

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed on Monday to hold a three-way meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on reviving peace talks, an Olmert adviser said.

The adviser, Miri Eisin, said the three would convene for talks in the ”near future”.

She gave no date or location for the meeting, which would come more than three years after US President George Bush held a summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jordan.

Rice met Olmert in Jerusalem one day after the top US diplomat, who held discussions with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, promised a bigger American push towards establishing a Palestinian state.

Rice has been pressing Olmert to take steps that could help bolster Abbas, who heads the once-dominant Fatah faction, in his power struggle with Hamas Islamists who took control of the Palestinian government in March after an election a year ago.

But just as Rice’s meeting with Olmert was getting under way, Israel’s Housing Ministry said it was building 44 new residential units in Maale Adumim, Israel’s largest settlement in the occupied West Bank.

A US-backed ”road map” peace plan calls for halting such construction on land Palestinians seek for a state. Washington has criticised such activity in the past. Israel asserts it is part of natural growth to accommodate the needs of settlers.

Eisin said the goal of a three-way meeting would be ”generating momentum on the bilateral track between the Israelis and the Palestinians”.

Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a political adviser to Abbas, said the moderate president has yet to be informed about three-way talks, but added: ”We welcome American participation in any Palestinian-Israeli meeting.”

Under US pressure, Olmert held his first formal meeting with Abbas on December 23.

Rice had promised Abbas she would press the Israeli leader to fulfil pledges made at that meeting to remove roadblocks in the West Bank and release $100-million in withheld Palestinian tax funds, Palestinian officials said.

Olmert has promised to take more sweeping steps, including the release of Palestinian prisoners if militants in Gaza free an Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in June.

The US and its allies imposed sanctions on the Hamas-led government in March to pressure the group to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace deals.

Testing the waters

Israeli and Palestinian officials said Rice’s visit, her eighth to the region during her two years as secretary of state, was meant to test the waters for a more concerted peace push in the coming months.

Rice, who held talks on Sunday with Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah, promised to deepen US involvement in the peace process, which collapsed in 2001.

But Rice offered no details in public about her future plans. She has shied away from high-speed Middle East diplomacy in the past.

Israeli officials said Washington was exploring several options, including the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, an idea proposed in the road map but repeatedly rejected by Abbas.

Abbas has called for new elections in a challenge to Hamas, and Washington hopes the Palestinian public will rally around the moderate president if he can demonstrate progress towards statehood.

The US is also seeking to strengthen Abbas militarily by pouring $86-million into helping train and equip his presidential guard.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, trounced Fatah in parliamentary elections in January 2006 and is building up its own heavily armed ”executive force”.

After her meeting with Olmert, Rice left Israel for Egypt. She will later travel to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait as well as Germany and Britain. — Reuters