Rice starts Mideast tour 'without a peace plan'

JERUSALEM, Saturday (AFP) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to kick off a Middle East tour Saturday to make another crack at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process but without a specific plan to resolve the conflict.

She was to arrive in Israel for talks with leaders there and in the Palestinian territories before heading to Arab capitals to rally support for a new US war strategy in Iraq and to counter Iran's alleged interference in the war-ravaged country. Rice said today she had no specific plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but was coming to listen.

Condoleezza Rice

“I am not coming with a proposal. I am not coming with a plan,” she told journalists accompanying her during a stopover in Shannon, Ireland.

“I have as an academic spent a good deal of time reading about past efforts to try and make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and a couple of things are crystal clear: if you don't lay groundwork very well, it is not going to succeed,” said the former political science professor.

“And I think no plan can be 'Made in America'. There are too many important stakeholders and any progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front is going to require all of the parties.”Rice is expected to meet Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday before traveling to Ramallah Sunday to talk with moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

She is also set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday. The administration of President George W. Bush has asked Congress to authorize 86 million dollars in military aid to boost security forces loyal to Abbas, who is locked in a deadly power struggle with the rival Hamas.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which heads the Palestinian government, is boycotted by Israel and the West which consider it a terrorist group.

Rice will then travel to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Britain before returning to Washington on January 19.
Her trip comes two days after President George W. Bush presented a new strategy to quell surging sectarian violence in Iraq with the deployment of 21,500 more troops.

Bush also declared a new initiative against Iranian and Syrian elements, which the United States accuses of destabilizing Iraq, while stepping up the US military presence in the Gulf.

Before her departure, Rice told US lawmakers her trip “will focus heavily on rallying the support of those responsible Arab states to support the government of Iraq, to support what needs to be done there, to support, of course, also Lebanon and the moderate Palestinians.”In an interview with the BBC's Arabic television released yesterday, Rice said it was ultimately up to the Iraqi leadership to restore security.

Bush's plan “very much puts Iraqis at the center of responsibility for dealing with what is their most urgent problem,” Rice said.
“Their most urgent problem is that the population has lost confidence that the government of Iraq can and will defend them in an even-handed fashion, whether they are Sunni or Shia,” Rice said.

Rice said on Thursday that it was vital to counter Iranian influence in Iraq and the region.