Daily Alert Archives

Rice to Seek Quartet Support for Mideast Effort

[Washington Post] Glenn Kessler - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will launch a new effort to forge a Palestinian state by seeking an endorsement Friday from a Washington meeting of the Quartet that monitors Middle East peace. In a series of recent trips to the region, Rice has tried to unite what she calls "mainstream" Arabs against extremist forces that include Iran, Hamas, and Hizbullah. She suggests that the strategic interests of Israel and its neighbors have begun to overlap, making it easier to win Arab support for and interest in a peace deal. Accepting an approach long urged by Europeans and Palestinians, Rice will push Olmert and Abbas to discuss the contours of a final peace deal, even though they have made little progress in implementing the initial steps of a peace plan promoted by the administration for the past four years. Rice suggests that sketching a "political horizon" will boost the confidence of the two sides to take those initial steps - and to ultimately give Abbas the leverage to defeat Hamas.
2007-02-02 01:00:00
Full Article