Rice says US may support unilateral Israeli moves

BERLIN, Mar 30: U S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today left open the possibility that Washington could support unilateral steps by Israel to impose final borders with the Palestinians.

Interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose Kadima party won elections on Tuesday, has vowed that in the absence of peace talks he plans to set Israel's frontier by 2010 by removing remote West Bank settlements and strengthening bigger enclaves on occupied land.

Asked whether the United States would support such a unilateral move, Rice said Washington had backed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, which was initially unilateral but ultimately coordinated with the Palestinians.

''So I would not on the face of it say ... that we do not think there is any value in what the Israelis are talking about.

But we can't support it because we don't know. We haven't had a chance to talk to them about what they have in mind,'' Rice told reporters travelling with her to Berlin.

''Of course everyone would like to see a negotiated solution, that is what the road map is about,'' she added.

Palestinians say Olmert's plan will deny them a viable state and annex land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Olmert says it would be a last resort in the absence of progress on a stalled, U S-backed peace ''road map'', especially since the militant group Hamas won Palestinian elections in January.

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have met obligations under the road map, which calls on Palestinians to start disarming militants and Israel to freeze all settlement construction as part of mutual steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.

A policy of unilateralism could spell the end of the road map. But with a Hamas-led government now in place, negotiations seem a long way off to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict.

UNI