BERLIN, 17 May 2004 — US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will press her European counterparts for a new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, US officials say.
Rice will also meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei today as part of renewed efforts to bring about Palestinian statehood next year.
Rice flew in from Russia, where she held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the next steps necessary to bring stability to Iraq. She was expected to press that theme with her European counterparts.
US officials said Rice would be focusing on the scheduled June 30 transfer of power to an interim Iraqi administration, the need for a new UN Security Council resolution, and increased international participation.
Rice will meet with national security advisers from nations including Britain, France and Germany. France and Germany opposed the US-led war in Iraq but are working closely with other nations to come up with a Security Council resolution endorsing the caretaker government that UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to create.
In today’s meetings with Qorei, Rice is expected to build on Saturday’s talks in Jordan between the Palestinian prime minister and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell urged Qorei to seize the opportunity for dismantling Israeli settlements in Gaza and some on the West Bank under a proposal offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Qorei was noncommittal in public statements afterward, but Powell said the prime minister, on whom the Bush administration has pinned much of its hopes for a reversal in lagging peace efforts, had agreed to look at whatever refinements Sharon makes in his proposal to evacuate all soldiers and the 7,500 Jewish settlers from the coastal strip following its rejection by hard-liners in his Likud Party.
