World powers today demanded immediate Palestinian action to catch those behind a suicide bombing in Israel, but also offered support for reforms aimed at halting violence and preparing Palestinians for statehood.
"We are trying to lay a foundation for a successful movement through the road map to a two-state solution," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a news conference in London.
She was speaking after an international meeting, hosted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that tried to underpin efforts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to implement reforms, halt violence and resume peacemaking with Israel after the death last year of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"We've got a script that is clearer today than ever before," Mr Blair told a news conference with Abbas after the meeting.
Meeting on the sidelines, the quartet that sponsored the 2003 "road map" to peace, the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, urged "immediate action by the Palestinian Authority to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators" of the Tel Aviv bomb that killed five people.
Mr Abbas, again condemning Friday's attack, which undermined a three-week-old truce with Israel, said security reforms were driven by Palestinian interests, not outside demands.
He told the news conference with Blair that Palestinians were committed to preventing attacks and said reforms had "not come from pressures from the quartet or any state within it".
Mr Abbas complained that Israel had not allowed the Palestinian interior minister to visit the Tel Aviv suicide bomber's home town of Tulkarm in the West Bank to investigate, but promised an unrelenting drive to track down the culprits.
Ratcheting up pressure on Syria, which Washington accuses of harbouring militants, Ms Rice cited what she called "firm evidence" the Islamic Jihad group that claimed responsibility for the Tel Aviv bombing had helped plan it from Damascus.
"And so the Syrians have a lot to answer for," Ms Rice told US-based ABC News.