JPost.Rice says hopes to salvage peace talks...

Bush says optimistic over Israel-PA peace deal in 2008
By Barak Ravid and News Agencies
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Tuesday. (AP)

U.S. President George W. Bush says he remains optimistic there will be a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of his presidency, despite broken-down negotiations.
"Ten months is a long time. There's plenty of time to get a deal done," Bush said after White House talks with Jordan's King Abdullah, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the region seeking to salvage the battered U.S.-sponsored peace push. Bush said the goal of U.S. diplomacy is to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. Rice earlier urged Israel and the Palestinians quickly to resume talks suspended over Israel's offensive in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended negotiations on Sunday in protest of the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 100 Palestinians before troops pulled out on Monday. Israel said it would send forces back in if cross-border rocket attacks continued. The fighting underscored the difficulty of achieving an agreement before Bush leaves office in January 2009, a goal that has drawn widespread skepticism inside and outside of the region.
"I'm optimistic and will continue to work hard to achieve the vision," Bush said. He insisted the United States "is engaged and will remain engaged" in the Middle East peace process. The United States and Israel have blamed the violence on Hamas, which seized control of Gaza from Abbas' forces in June, and say the Islamist group is trying to wreck Palestinian statehood talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The American president said Rice was pushing the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to resume talks, hours after Rice urged leaders from the two countries to sit back down at the negotiating table. Rice also said earlier Tuesday that she believed that a peace deal was possible by the end of the year. Speaking at a news conference after meeting Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Rice gave no indication, however, that she had secured the Palestinian leader's agreement to return to talks.
Abbas told the news conference he wanted a "complete truce" in the Gaza Strip and in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has carried out raids against militants it says are planning attacks.
Rice said: "I still believe that that can be done," by the end of Bush's term. She added: "We look forward to the resumption of those negotiations as soon as possible." Abbas said 20 children had been among dozens of civilians killed in Hamas-controlled Gaza in Israel's five-day assault, its most powerful in the territory since it withdrew settlers and its army in 2005.
I call on the Israeli government to halt its aggression in order that we can afford the necessary atmosphere to conduct the negotiations," Abbas said, without setting any timeframe for resuming the talks on statehood issues. He added that he still aspired to a deal this year but blamed the hiatus on Israel. No one can justify the killing actions of the Israeli army over the past few days," said Abbas, who also called for his Hamas rivals to stop firing rockets into southern Israel.
Rice, too, demanded that Hamas, which routed Abbas's Wstern-backed forces in Gaza last year, cease the rocket attacks. Rice says hopes to salvage peace talks Rice arrived in Israel earlier on Tuesday after saying she hoped to salvage the suspended peace talks.
Rice said Hamas is trying to wreck chances for the peace proces, after holding talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo on a stopover before heading to Israel that aimed to calm Arab ire over the operation. Israel launched an offensive into the Gaza Strip to stop rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups on nearby Israeli cities, but the assault prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend negotiations.
"There has to be an active peace process that can withstand the efforts of rejectionists to keep peace from being made, the people who are firing rockets do not want peace," Rice told reporters in Cairo. "They sow instability, that is what Hamas is doing."
"Hamas is doing what might be expected, which is using rocket attacks on Israel to arrest a peace process in which they have nothing to gain," Rice said.
"Negotiations ought to resume as soon as possible," she said, adding that any lengthy suspension of talks handed victory to Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June and whose stepped up rocket attacks into Israel preceded the latest offensive.
Rice's first meeting in Cairo was with Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, followed by talks with President Hosni Mubarak. Experts say Rice faces an uphill battle to revive the peace talks -launched to much fanfare last November, in Annapolis, Maryland with the goal of getting a Palestinian statehood deal before the Bush administration's term ends in January 2009.
"I continue to believe that they can get to a deal by the end of the year if everybody has got the will to do it," said Rice, adding implementation of a deal would take a lot longer. She dismissed sceptics who have predicted the Annapolis process will fail without including Hamas and that U.S. attempts to isolate Gaza will ultimately backfire.
"It is going to have its ups and downs. There will be good days and bad days and even good weeks and bad weeks. I am going to talk to the parties about staying focused on what needs to be done here," she said. Rice added the stop in Egypt to her itinerary only in the past few days. Government sources said Rice would be discussing the border during her visits to Egypt, Israel and the PA.
In her talks with Israeli leaders, Rice is expected once again to raise Egypt's request to increase the number of its soldiers on the border by 750. Rice is also expected to seek Israel's response to the plan to reopen the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and to Fayyad's plan to transfer control of the crossings between Gaza and Israel to the PA. Olmert to tell Rice: Israel wants to renew talks Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to tell Rice on Tuesday that Israel wants to renew talks with the PA quickly.
Rice, who is due to arrive in Israel on Tuesday afternoon, will head directly for Ramallah for talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. She will later dine in Jerusalem with Olmert.
Rice will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Tuesday. Rice's visit had been planned to gauge progress on the peace process after President George W. Bush's recent visit to the region. But in light of events in the Gaza Strip, Rice is expected to work toward getting the talks back on track.
Olmert, who is said to have been disappointed in the PA announcement on the suspension of negotiations, will reportedly ask Rice to urge the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited Israel Monday, proposed that the Israelis open a dialogue with Egypt and the PA as soon as possible toward clinching a "package deal" on Gaza.
He said an overall agreement of this type could include new security arrangements on the Philadelphi route, the reopening of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, a solution to the matter of the Israel-Gaza crossings and an attempt to reach a cease-fire with Hamas through Egyptian mediation.
Solana also said that such a dialogue should not be conducted in a way that would be "an achievement for Hamas." In light of recent calls by some European countries to immediately open the Gaza Strip crossings, Livni told Solana that Europe should not take any action that could be construed as a victory for Hamas.
Livni gave a briefing to foreign ambassadors on Monday, telling them that when talking about "collective punishment" it should be remembered that Sderot and Ashkelon are also experiencing collective punishment.
haaretz.com