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No High Hopes on Mideast Trip, Rice Says

[Los Angeles Times] Ashraf Khalil - Secretary of State Rice on Sunday sought to downplay expectations as she began several days of shuttle diplomacy designed to nudge the Palestinians and Israelis closer to the bargaining table in advance of a U.S. peace conference. "I don't expect...that there will be any particular outcome in the sense of breakthroughs," Rice told reporters on the flight to Tel Aviv. In the days leading up to Rice's visit, public statements from both the Israelis and Palestinians highlighted a large gap in expectations of what the conference could produce. Abbas is pressing for definitive agreements on deeply divisive issues such as right of return for Palestinian refugees and a timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli government officials, however, view the conference as a starting point for a much longer and, at least initially, vaguer process. "There is a chance that before long Rice will be joining other senior American officials who visited our quagmire, tried to swim in it, almost drowned and went home with nothing," said Yaron Dekel, a prominent Israeli journalist.
2007-10-15 01:00:00
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