WUS Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Israeli and Palestinian leaders yesterday in a bid to revive the peace process that has been stalled by violence. During breakfast talks with Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, she pushed him to do more to improve the daily lives of Palestinians and to meet commitments in the US-sponsored “road map”, which include a freeze on settlement building in the occupied West Bank. “Israel should do nothing to try and prejudge final status or the outlines of a final settlement,” Rice told reporters traveling with her from Washington.

In a planned meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Rice was expected to pressure him to rein in militants from Hamas, an Islamic militant group running in a January Palestinian parliamentary election. “You cannot build a democratic state and a foundation for peace when you have organizations that remain armed and constantly reserve the means to destroy that foundation for peace,” said Rice.

Sharon reiterated on Sunday his stand that peace talks could be held under the “road map” only after Palestinians disarmed militants. The United States, which says tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict is a foreign policy priority, wants both sides to get back on track with the “roadmap” for a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. Washington had hoped there would be agreement on getting better access for goods and people into and out of Gaza by the time Rice visited this week and that an announcement would coincide with her visit.

US Middle East envoy James Wolfensohn, the former head of the World Bank, has been in the region trying to resolve problems at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt but there are still some sticking points. “We are very close but not quite there yet,” said one State Department official of an agreement on the Rafah crossing. Rice is hoping to build on the momentum from the successful withdrawal from Gaza last September of Israeli troops. A spate of bombings by Palestinians and counter-attacks by Israelis crushed much of that optimism.

She says she believes democratic changes in other parts of the Middle East could help revive the Arab-Israeli peace process. “We have hope for peace today because people no longer accept that despotism is the eternal political condition of the Middle East,” Rice was to tell a forum in Jerusalem. During her one-day visit she will attend a memorial ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

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