Rice to meet Arab ministers next week, says Egypt

Cairo, Mar 18: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet foreign ministers of four Arab states in Egypt next week ahead of an Arab summit, Egypt's foreign minister said.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters the meeting, set for March 24 in the southern town of Aswan, will bring together the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates with Rice and himself. He did not elaborate.

Rice visits the region at a time when calls are growing on Washington to lift Western financial sanctions imposed on the Palestinians after the formation of a unity cabinet between the Islamist Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group.

''I demand that the economic siege that has starved the Palestinian people ... be stopped,'' Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said yesterday.

Israel said the new government, approved by the Palestinian parliament on Saturday, endorses ''terror'' and should be shunned.

But Israel said it would maintain talks with Abbas.

Rice, who will also meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, spoke favourably ahead of her visit of a 2002 Saudi peace plan that offers Israel normal ties in return for full withdrawal from the land it occupied in the 1967 war.

Some West Asia analysts have suggested that the revived interest in the Saudi plan reflect a US desire to curry favour with Riyadh to gain its help quelling the violence in Iraq.

The majority of Arabs doubt the United States is serious enough to revive the West Asia peace process because of the Bush administration's support of Israel and what they describe as the inability of Arab leaders to challenge Washington.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said on Wednesday some aspects of the Saudi plan, endorsed by all Arab states, were positive but suggested that Arab leaders should normalise their relations with Israel without waiting for a peace agreement.

Arabs reject this and say the peace plan was final.

''This initiative was unanimously put forward in the (Arab) summit of 2002 in Beirut. There is no change to this initiative ...

and we hope it will be a key to solve the problem,'' Mubarak said in remarks published yesterday.

Reuters