Rice, Olmert plan three-way summit with Abbas

JERUSALEM, Jan 15 (Reuters) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today agreed to hold a three-way summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on reviving peace talks, Israeli media reported.

The reports did not say when the summit would take place or where. Rice met Olmert in Jerusalem one day after the top US diplomat, meeting with Abbas, promised a bigger American push towards establishing a Palestinian state.

Rice has been pressing Olmert to take steps that could help bolster Abbas of Fatah in his power struggle with Hamas Islamists who control the government.

But just as Rice's meeting with Olmert was getting under way, Israel's Housing Ministry said it was building 44 new residential units in Maale Adumim, Israel's largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, near Jerusalem.

The US-backed ''road map'' peace plan calls for halting such construction on land Palestinians seek for a state. Washington has criticised such construction in the past. Israel asserts it is part of natural growth.

Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a political adviser to Abbas, said the moderate president has yet to be informed about a three-way summit but added: ''We welcome American participation in any Palestinian-Israeli meeting.'' Under US pressure, Olmert held his first formal meeting with Abbas on December 23.

During Rice's meeting with Olmert, she was expected to press the Israeli leader to fulfil pledges made at that meeting to remove roadblocks in the West Bank and release 100 million dollars in withheld Palestinian tax funds to Abbas.

Olmert has promised to make take more sweeping steps if the Palestinian government, led by Hamas since March, agreed to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace deals.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said Rice's visit, her eighth to the region during her two years as secretary of state, was meant to test the waters for a more concerted peace push in the coming months.

Rice, who held talks yesterday with Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah, promised to deepen US involvement in the peace process, which collapsed in 2001.

But Rice offered no details in public about her future plans. She has shied away from high-speed West Asia diplomacy in the past.

Israeli officials said Washington was exploring several options including the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, an idea proposed in a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the ''road map'' but repeatedly rejected by Abbas.

REUTERS LL VC1622