US says Rice likely to visit Mideast in near future

Washington, Jan 5: US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is likely to visit the West Asia soon and sees an opening for Arab-Israeli peace despite the Palestinan power struggle, the State Department said.

''I would expect in the near future that she probably will travel to the Middle East,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters yesterday, saying he could not provide details on when or where she may travel.

McCormack said Rice would focus on three issues during the trip, making progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, promoting stability in Lebanon and finding ways to support the Iraqi government to 'achieve a more stable, secure situation in Iraq.' ''This next trip is going to be more of intensive discussions and really, sort of, doing a deep dive on what are the possibilities and how might we partner together to move forward,'' he said of the effort on Israeli-Palestinian peace.

West Asia analysts are skeptical any progress is likely until the standoff between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas-led government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is resolved.

Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, killing four Palestinians, while fighting in Gaza among rival Palestinian factions loyal to Abbas' Fatah movement and to Hamas in Gaza killed six people.

Violence among the Palestinian factions has surged since Abbas directly challenged Hamas by calling on December. 16 for early parliamentary and presidential elections after talks on forming a unity government failed.

The fighting is part of a wider power struggle between the Hamas-led government, which came to power in March 2006 and remains officially committed to the destruction of Israel, and Abbas, who favors a two-state peace deal between Israel and a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on December. 23 and agreed to try to revive peace negotiations that collapsed in 2000.

Hamas, in contrast, has refused to recognise Israel's right to exist, to respect past peace deals or to renounce violence -- three conditions for ending a Western aid boycott.

''One of the prerequisites for really making progress on a political horizon between the Israelis and Palestinians is the Palestinians sorting out (their) political differences,'' McCormack said. ''That doesn't mean that in the interim you cannot work with those who are partners for peace.'' If she travels to Israel and the Palestinian territories, it would be Rice's eighth visit to the region in less than two years.

Rice's last visit was in late November, when she met Abbas in the West Bank town of Jericho and Olmert in Jerusalem.

McCormack said Rice would not travel before US President George W Bush gives a speech outlining his new approach toward Iraq. No date has been announced for that speech.

REUTERS

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