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Rice courts leaders in Europe to help with 'road map'

Tentative talks between Israel and the Palestinians aimed at restarting the peace process could begin next month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during meetings in Europe to rally support from British and German leaders.

A three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would likely take place in the Middle East in the first half of next month but not constitute formal negotiations, Rice said.

Rice briefed German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and said that US, German and other diplomats would convene a Middle East strategy session early next month in Washington.

Rice later held talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. Blair has made the task of reviving peace talks a key goal of his final months in office. He toured the region last month.

Rice said her planned discussions with Olmert and Abbas would form a peacemaking summit ahead of later talks to tackle the toughest issues.

"We're not yet at the point where I think we can determine what we would do about formal negotiations, when and if" they can occur, Rice said. "It's really a time to try to get the parties into more of a confidence-building phase and we'll see what comes after that."

Both leaders have suffered blows to their authority in the last year: Olmert by last summer's disappointing war in Lebanon and allegations of political corruption in his ranks; Abbas by his year-long internal power struggle with Hamas radicals.

The British leader, who will step down by September, met Rice without his staff present, and had planned to brief his advisers on the session yesterday, a Downing Street spokesman said.

Rice acknowledged that the requirements of the 2003 step-by-step plan for Palestinian statehood, known as the "road map," had become something of an obstacle in restarting talks between the two sides, but she said it remains the guideline.

As Rice touched down in London, Blair faced a political storm as a senior Cabinet minister denounced US President George W. Bush's administration as the most "right wing in living memory."

Blair's Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Hain, said in an interview published on Thursday that Bush's "neo-con unilateralism" had damaged the fight against global terrorism and "taken the world's eyes off the ball of solving the Middle East conflict."

"It's not only failed to provide a coherent international policy, it's failed wherever it's been tried," Hain was quoted as telling New Statesman magazine.
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