US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, seeking to bolster the moderate leader in his power struggle with Hamas and find a way to restart peace talks. Rice is seeking to accelerate the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israeli officials said she was exploring options that could include the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders. The United States wants Abbas to emerge victorious in his showdown with the ruling Hamas Islamists, a group Washington labels a terrorist entity. The United States plans to pour $86 m into helping train and equip Abbas?s presidential guard. Hamas receives aid from Iran and other Islamist allies, and is building up its own ?executive force.?

Rice met Israeli ministers on Saturday but said she had not come to the region with a specific plan to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that collapsed in 2000.

Palestinians officials said Abbas wanted to hear what Rice had to say, but they repeated the president?s opposition to any talk of creating a Palestinian state with temporary borders. Rice and Abbas met in the West Bank city of Ramallah and planned to hold a news conference later in the day.

?We want this to be the beginning of the endgame. It?s high time the peace process was revived in order to implement negotiations on final status issues,? said Saeb Erekat, a senior Abbas aide. At a news conference with Rice in Jerusalem on Saturday evening, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said moderate Palestinians needed a ?political horizon.?

She did not give details, but Israeli officials said Livni and Rice had been discussing the possibility of creating a Palestinian state with temporary borders following the line of a barrier Israel is building in and around the occupied West Bank. Palestinians fear such borders would become final, leaving them with a truncated state. Rice herself said she wanted to accelerate the US-backed peace ?roadmap.?

Wafa AMR