Rice heads to Mideast as Palestinians clash

WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the West Asia this week to test the waters for a new push on Arab-Israeli peace even as fighting among Palestinian factions underscored the huge obstacles.

Rice left yesterday night on a journey that takes her to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories, her first trip to the region since a July visit at the height of the war between Israel and Hizbollah militants in Lebanon.

Arab leaders argue that the 34-day war, in which at least 1,100 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, most of them soldiers, died, vividly illustrated the danger of leaving the core West Asia dispute unresolved.

Critics believe U.S. President George W. Bush has never devoted sufficient time to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a charge that makes U.S. officials bristle, and some are skeptical Rice's trip heralds any new, sustained focus.

Other analysts argued the prospects for any peace effort are severely limited by divisions among the Palestinians and the political weakness of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose popularity plunged as a result of the Lebanon war.

Rival Palestinian security forces clashed across the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing eight people and injuring at least 100, in the worst outbreak of internal fighting in months over unpaid wages and stalled unity government talks.

The clashes stoked fears of civil war as the rival forces, loyal to either Hamas or President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, exchanged fire from rooftops near the parliament building in Gaza City and set ablaze several government offices in the area and in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

''My feeling is that in a pretty fundamental way the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Lebanese all have desperate internal crises ... and not one of them is about to do something dramatic, in my judgment, because the internal problems are so severe,'' said Jon Alterman of the CSIS think tank in Washington.

''So the secretary will go out, but it doesn't feel like the stars are aligning for a breakthrough.''

SUPPORTING ABBAS

The Palestinian leadership remains riven between Abbas and the Hamas-led government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which came to power in March after the Islamist movement trounced Abbas' Fatah party in January elections.

The United States spearheaded a Western aid embargo against Hamas, demanding it recognize Israel, renounce violence and respect past peace accords before direct assistance resumes.

In a newspaper interview last week, Ms Rice laid out a strategy whose core element was to support Abbas. The United States will not deal with Hamas, which it has branded a ''terrorist'' organization.

Her ideas included helping Abbas develop security forces; giving him more time to try to bridge the impasse with Hamas, which remains officially committed to the destruction of Israel; and channeling more aid to the Palestinians via an international mechanism that bypasses Hamas.

''I don't think we can afford to not engage on the Palestinian issues,'' Rice told the New York Times. ''I don't think we can afford to just let time go by.'' She also said she believed Gulf states were now more willing to help Abbas in tangible ways.

The State Department said Ms Rice would meet Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as well as Olmert and Abbas on her trip.

She was also expected to have a group meeting with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

REUTERS