US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which she pledged Washington's support for his efforts to end anti-Israeli violence and institute reforms.
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| US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
"The Palestinian leadership will have to make some difficult choices to do some hard things concerning security, but they will find very good partners in the international community and the United States will be foremost among them," Dr Rice said this morning before travelling to Ramallah in the West Bank.
On her first visit to the Middle East since taking up her post last month, Dr Rice yesterday proposed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "security mechanism" that she indicated would involve the United States monitoring a ceasefire accord.
Israel and the Palestinians hope to announce a formal end to more than four years of bloodshed at a summit in Egypt tomorrow.
The meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh will mark a dramatic return to efforts to get a US-backed peace "road map" back on track. The plan charts mutual steps towards establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
Dr Rice wants to help Mr Abbas build democratic institutions from Ramallah, where predecessor Yasser Arafat is buried in his compound in which he was confined until close to his death in November.
Entering the Muqata compound, Dr Rice's motorcade drove past Mr Arafat's tomb without stopping.
The United States shunned Mr Arafat as an obstacle to peace, but Dr Rice's visit showed the Bush administration is apparently eager to bolster Mr Abbas with concrete measures to support his efforts to rein in violence since his election last month.
"That will include financial support. It will include political support. It will include training and security. It will include efforts with other parties to get them to be active," she said in a television interview.
Dr Rice also repeated a call for Israel to dismantle settlement outposts built in the occupied West Bank without Israeli government authorisation.
Palestinian leaders have generally welcomed moves to involve the international community in resolving the conflict.
But many Palestinians are wary of US involvement because of what they saw as President George W. Bush's pro-Israeli stance in his first term when he backed Mr Sharon's intention to keep in any future peace accord some lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Dr Rice's predecessor, Mr Colin Powell, made infrequent trips to the area and was last in Ramallah in 2002. Criticised for too little involvement in Middle East peace efforts in his first term, Mr Bush sent Dr Rice to the region to back up his pledge to press harder for an end to the conflict.