WEST BANK: U.S. Secretary of State Rice seeks Mideast peace deal while President Bush is in office

Record ID: 561520

  • Title: WEST BANK: U.S. Secretary of State Rice seeks Mideast peace deal while President Bush is in office
  • Date: 6th November 2007
  • Summary: (W3) RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (NOVEMBER 5, 2007) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PALESTINIAN SECURITY MEN OUTSIDE PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS' COMPOUND UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE'S CONVOY ARRIVING AT ABBAS'S HEADQUARTERS RICE GETTING OUT OF CAR, SHAKING HANDS WITH ABBAS' SENIOR AID SAEB EREKAT, ENTERING BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 21st November 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAAONWOY4GT739SPHZLXSH1H7VF
  • Story Text: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Palestinian President Abbas to finalise deadlines for future statehood negotiations with Israel that she hopes to seal before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office. Rice urges Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to "take off his uniform" and call for swift elections in Pakistan, after the Musharraf's decision to announce emergency rule.
    U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday (November 5) she hoped Israel and the Palestinians could reach a peace agreement before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.

    "This is indeed historic time, a time of real opportunity and I look forward to working with you over the next period of time so we might might prepare for a successful meeting at Annapolis which should be the launching pad then, or the negotiations that we have long sought," Rice told reporters in a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
    Echoing recent comments by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Rice also told the news conference she hoped for negotiations after the Annapolis meeting that "could achieve their goals within the time remaining to the Bush administration".
    But wrapping up two days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, she again gave no date for a U.S.-led conference which all parties have said would serve as a launching pad for statehood negotiations.
    Rice said only that the meeting, in Annapolis, Maryland, would take place "before the end of the year".
    Israel and the Palestinians are still deeply divided over core issues they have pledged to tackle after the conference: borders; the future of Jerusalem; and millions of Palestinian refugees.

    "I expressed in my speech the positivity that I found in what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said regarding all the basic issues that have been hanging and famous between us since Oslo and till now. All these issues will be discussed and it is premature to say what are the solutions," Abbas told reporters with Rice at his side.

    "If we have solutions then why do we need negotiations. All the issues are there and all the issues will be discussed so that we can reach to the result that satisfy us and satisfy our people. They are based on the international terms of reference," he added.
    Setting precise timelines for Israeli-Palestinian peace moves, a Palestinian demand that Israel opposes, has been a key point of contention as both sides try to put together a joint document to be presented at the gathering.
    Abbas, an aide said, had proposed to Rice that statehood negotiations be completed no later than six months after the end of the conference, pencilled in for the last week of November though it could slip to December.
    In an indication of difficulties ahead, Israel has also put the Palestinians on notice it would not implement an agreement until its security concerns, spelled out in a U.S.-backed peace "road map" formulated in 2003, were met.
    The Palestinians have called on Israel to meet its commitments under that blueprint and halt settlement expansion and uproot outposts established in the occupied West Bank without Israeli government permission.
    Abbas, whose Fatah faction lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas Islamists in June, said at the news conference he was seeking the release of more Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
    An Israeli government official said Israel was weighing the matter.
    Israel freed 250 prisoners in July and another 86 in October.
    In her news conference in Ramallah, Rice had also said that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf should leave his military post and that the country should move towards elections under the constitution.

    "We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections. It is also true that President Musharraf has said that he would take off uniform," Rice said.

    "Our disappointment is that this is a set back for that path and so the more quickly and the more urgently that the Pakistani leadership and President Musharraf act on their stated desire to get back to the constitutional path, it would be for the better of everyone, most especially for the Pakistani people," she added.
    Earlier on Monday, the United States and Britain heaped pressured on Musharraf, urging him to hold elections on time, as police detained hundreds of lawyers angry at his imposition of emergency rule.
    Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify Saturday's action, and slapped reporting curbs on the media in a bid to stop outrage spilling onto the streets amid Pakistan's biggest crisis since he took power in a 1999 coup.
    General Musharraf's move heightened a sense of uncertainty in nuclear-armed Pakistan and he had to shoot down rumours sweeping the country on Monday that he had been put under house arrest.
    Ends.
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