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Rice says Middle East talks to resume

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to resume peace talks suspended over an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, but she did not specify a date.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meanwhile said he would resume peace talks with Israel, backing off a threat to boycott negotiations until Israel reaches a truce with Hamas militants in Gaza.

"The peace process is a strategic choice and we have the intention of resuming the peace process," he said in a statement. He did not say when talks would restart.

Abbas suspended talks earlier this week to protest Israel's military crackdown in Gaza. Earlier yesterday, he said he would not resume talks until a truce was reached.

Abbas' comments touched off a flurry of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Rice with the Palestinians. After speaking to Abbas by telephone, she told a news conference a truce was not a condition for restarting the talks on Palestinian statehood.

"I've been informed by the parties that they intend to resume the negotiations and that they are in contact with one another as to how to bring this about," Rice said at a news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Rice, ending a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, did not say when the next round of talks, which the US hopes can result in an agreement before US President George W. Bush leaves office in January, would be held.

Abbas' office issued a statement after he spoke to Rice that did not repeat his condition for talks. It said Rice was exerting efforts to "enforce a mutual calm" and Abbas' intention was to "resume the peace process and negotiations."

Rice said a special US-Israeli-Palestinian committee would meet next week to examine to what extent the sides were meeting their commitments under a long-stalled peace "road map."

The Palestinians had sought such a meeting to put pressure on Israel to meet its obligation to freeze settlement activity. The road map calls on Palestinians to rein in militants.

Abbas froze negotiations with Israel on Sunday in protest at an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip in which more than 120 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed. Medical workers said about half of the Palestinian dead were civilians.

Israel ended the five-day offensive on Monday but threatened to send troops back into the territory, which Hamas Islamists seized from Abbas' secular Fatah faction in June, if rocket salvoes continued.

Commenting on prospects for a ceasefire, Hamas said Israel must "stop all forms of aggression against our people" and reopen the Gaza Strip's border crossings.

Israel mounted air strikes and a brief ground raid on Tuesday, killing a militant and a baby, medical workers said. Several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit Israel on Wednesday, causing no casualties.

A statement issued by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office after a security Cabinet meeting yesterday said it would act "continuously and systematically" to halt the salvoes and try to weaken Hamas.

But it stopped short of threatening a broad ground offensive in the Gaza Strip which some of Olmert's ministers have urged him to launch in the territory of 1.5 million people.

A spokesman for Olmert indicated, however, that Israel might hold its fire if Gaza gunmen did the same.
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