Rice in Israel to speed up peace efforts
Secretary of state begins two-day visit to Middle East in effort to speed up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, says she plans to review whether Israel had taken steps on the ground to make life easier for Palestinians
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel to try and give peace talks another push.
Rice touched down late Saturday and headed directly to Jerusalem for dinner with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. She hopes to move peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along faster, and monitor progress on the ground. Olmert and Abbas and scheduled to meet on Monday.
Earlier on Saturday Rice urged Israel not to undercut Palestinian security forces as they deploy in the West Bank and questioned if its promises to remove roadblocks had been kept.
Speaking to reporters as she flew to the region for a two-day visit, Rice said she planned to review whether Israel had taken steps on the ground to make life easier for Palestinians.
She also plans to assess the extent to which the Palestinians have honored their own commitments, which include cracking down on militants that launch attacks on Israel.
Abbas' security forces began deploying to the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday for a law-and-order campaign meant to show the government is laying the ground for statehood.
Palestinian officials have long complained Israel has undercut their forces by launching raids in areas where they are trying to assume responsibility for security.
"There have to be very insistent efforts to make sure that they are not being undermined," Rice
said.
She also plans to hold trilateral meetings with the top peace negotiators, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qurei of the Palestinians, as well as with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
'Everyone wants to see things move more quickly'
Washington wants the Jenin campaign to go beyond crime-fighting to combat militant groups—Israel's main condition for implementing a peace agreement.
Rice said the most important part of her talks would be to review "where we are in terms of the situation on the ground and the improvement of life for the Palestinian people".
Following her last trip in late March, Israel announced plans to remove 61 barriers and roadblocks in the occupied West Bank but a UN Survey subsequently found only 44 had been removed and that most were of little or no significance.
"The first thing we are going to do is to review the ones that were supposedly moved," Rice told reporters, adding that she wanted to discuss with Israeli officials how significant those barriers were to allowing Palestinian movement.
"Not all road blocks are created equal," Rice said.
US President George W. Bush has set an ambitious goal of trying to reach an agreement on a Palestinian state and an end to the six-decade conflict by the end of this year but there has so far been little visible progress in the talks.
At the same time, the Bush administration is trying to improve the lot of Palestinians whose economic life is stunted by hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks on the West Bank.
While Rice has repeatedly said the peace talks are making headway, US officials have also made clear that they would like them to move faster.
"Everyone, President Abbas, I, the president (Bush) would like to see things move more quickly—that's why we keep coming and pressing all the parties to meet their obligations," Rice said.
US officials are sensitive to the lack of demonstrable progress in the talks and they hope to use a visit by Bush, who will travel to the region this month to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, to nudge them along.
