Rice: tough decisions needed
U.S. Secretary of State finishes talks with Israeli leaders; expected to press Abbas to do more on anti-terror front
JERUSALEM - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are scheduled to meet Monday in Ramallah.
The Palestinians are expecting to hear about the U.S. plan to aid the economy, as well as Rice's position regarding the prisoner releases.
Rice met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday in Jerusalem as Israel and the Palestinians prepare for Tuesday's Middle East summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
On her first trip to the Middle East since taking over at the State Department, Rice said that Israel has some hard decisions to make as it moves toward peace with the Palestinians and the creation of a neighboring democracy.
She also urged both sides to live up to their promises.
Before their meeting, Prime Minister Sharon said he was sure his talks with Rice would "contribute to the friendly relations between the two countries."
Sharon said he also expected her visit to contribute to the peace process, "which we very much want to push forward in the region."
In response, Rice said, "This is a hopeful time, but it is a time also of great responsibility for all of us to make certain that we act on the words that we speak."
She said her goal was to "try to advance the cause of peace and to overcome the scourge of terrorism."
Earlier Sunday, Rice said she would push both Israel and the Palestinians to make progress toward peace.
"We will ask of our partners and our friends in Israel that Israel continues to make the hard decisions that must be taken in order to promote peace and ... the emergence of a democratic Palestinian state," Rice said before a meeting with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
"This is a time of optimism because fundamental changes are underway in the Middle East as a whole," she said.
After the meeting, Shalom told Israel's Channel Two TV that he gave Rice Israel's demands of the Palestinians.
"If the Palestinians do not to everything to halt the smuggling of weapons through tunnels, close the tunnels, close the weapons workshops, gather up illegal weapons - we would simply be giving the violent groups time to regroup and then carry out terror attacks that could collapse the whole process," he said.
Rice wants progress on two fronts
Rice reportedly wants to see progress on two fronts at this time - Palestinian anti-terror activity, and the creation of an Israeli-Palestinian-American mechanism to handle crisis situation. That way, she hopes, contacts between the two sides could continue even in the face of terror attacks.
Before she departed for her first overseas tour as secretary of state, Rice was asked whether she intends to press Israel to offer goodwill gestures to the Palestinians, such as a prisoner release or a decision to reroute the West Bank security fence.
She chose to ignore the question, and instead stressed that despite the positive measures adopted to date by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, eventually he would have to dismantle terrorist groups so progress can be made on the U.S.-backed road map plan.
U.S. expects Israel to remove outposts
But Paul Patin, a spokesman of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Rice would bring up a wide range of issues, including Israel's commitment under the internationally backed "road map" peace plan to dismantle dozens of unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts and Israeli gestures to the Palestinians, such as the removal of Israeli checkpoints that disrupt Palestinian travel.
"Outposts are something that they (the Israelis) promised to remove years ago, and we expect them to abide by their commitments," Patin said.
Overall, Washington is said to be satisfied with Israeli plans to hand over five West Bank towns to the Palestinians and release 900 prisoners. As a result, the Americans are expected to mostly press Abbas at this point.
Despite Rice's arrival, she would not attend Tuesday's Israel-Palestinian summit in Egypt.
“Washington doesn’t need to be involved in everything, when both parties are meeting and making progress,” she said.
The genuine reason for her absence, however, may be more complex. Some observers believe Rice may not want to get too closely involved in Palestinian-Israeli contacts before genuine results are achieved.
-AP contributed to this report
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