WASHINGTON: The United States denied reports Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has plans to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Territories next week.
There is no such plan, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
She will be in Africa with the president next week, starting on Friday afternoon, and they are getting back on Wednesday night, he said.
Various officials said that a trip to the region by the top US diplomat would take place soon, although there was little agreement on precisely when.
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that Rice would travel to the region at the beginning of March.
Ahmed Qorei, the former prime minister heading the Palestinian team in the revived Middle East peace talks, told journalists Sunday that Rice would head to the region within the coming days, and she will try to push the negotiations on Middle East peace.
Another senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Rice would be in the region on Feb. 18.
Israel and the Palestinians officially revived their peace talks in late November at a US conference under Washington s stewardship after a seven-year freeze and US President George W. Bush traveled to the region in January to give the effort a boost.
But the talks have been overshadowed by Israeli building in occupied Palestinian territory and lethal military operations in Gaza, barrages of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza and, in the past week, the first suicide bombing inside Israel in a year.
Rice was to meet Monday in Washington the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and the peace talks were to figure in their discussions, McCormack said.
Asked about a suggestion by top Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon that the outlines of a peace deal – although not a final agreement – could be concluded during 2008, McCormack replied that the pledges made in November by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to aim for a deal by the end of Bush s term in January 2009 still stood.
Those commitments in our eyes still stand, he said.
McCormack said Rice and Fayyad are also to discuss the state of the border between Egypt and Gaza, which was overrun by Gazan Palestinians after Israel shut down trade, traffic and infrastructure on its own border with the enclave.
I know the Egyptians have reasserted control of that border, McCormack said.
There are still questions about ongoing access to the crossing points and the control of those crossing points, but the immediate crisis of uncontrolled access points is resolved.
It is the question now of getting in place something that works from the security stand point and from the humanitarian stand point. -AFP
