WASHINGTON, 24 March 2007 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left yesterday to visit Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Jordan in an effort to make progress on Middle East peace.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Rice’s trip would begin with a stop in the southern Egyptian city of Aswan, where she will meet ministers from the so-called “Arab Quartet” of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as President Hosni Mubarak.
Rice will discuss ways to revive long-frozen Middle East peace negotiations with the ministers from the Quartet, all four of them at odds with US strategy. These four countries are major players in the Arab League, which will meet next week in Riyadh.
The Egypt leg of Rice’s trip will be limited to the Palestinian-Israeli issue, officials said. On March 25, she will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories for talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
She will then travel to Amman for talks with Jordan’s King Abdallah, and then back to Israel for more contacts with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The spokesman said she plans to return to Washington on March 27.
This will be Rice’s fourth Middle East trip in as many months. Diplomats and US officials say she is bringing a new plan: She has promised the Palestinians that she will try to coax the Israelis into giving the Palestinians a “political horizon,’’ a phrase meant to denote the outlines of a future Palestinian state.
She also will ask the Arabs to sketch a “political horizon” for the Israelis — the initial step to recognition, intended to give the Israeli government more room to strike a deal.
Diplomats say they expect the Arab League to reaffirm a peace offer made to Israel in 2002. The offer promised recognition of Israel if it returns to 1967 borders and allows for the return of Palestinian refugees.
Israel has previously refused the idea of the right of return for Palestinians, but in recent months, under US prodding, it has expressed support for an original version of the offer put forth by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah when he was crown prince.
Rice wants to gather together the Middle East Quartet (the European Union, Russia, the United States and United Nations), the Arab Quartet, Israel and Palestinian leader Abbas for a single meeting this spring.
Skeptics say the trip’s timing appears less than ideal given last Saturday’s formation of a Hamas-led Palestinian unity government that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to shun because it has not fully accepted three international conditions.
While the government pledged to respect past peace deals, it has not recognized Israel or renounced violence, the two other conditions set by the Mideast Quartet for lifting a Western aid embargo imposed after Hamas won elections last year.
Rice’s trip is President Bush’s latest attempt to refurbish a foreign policy trapped by the war in Iraq. On March 10, the Iraqi government hosted an international conference on security in Baghdad and aims to hold another next month. The Riyadh summit on March 28 and 29 is designed to promote regional peace.
