US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she will ask Israel to remove more physical barriers erected in the West Bank as a bulwark against Palestinian militants.
In a busy day yesterday, Rice was scheduled to hold a series of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including three-way sessions with the Israeli foreign minister and the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, and another with Israel’s defense minister and the Palestinian prime minister.
The Bush administration also would like to see speedier progress toward a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, a goal of US President George W. Bush in his final year in office, Rice said on Saturday en route to Israel and the West Bank for weekend meetings.
Rice’s visit coincides with new doubts about the viability of both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’ unannounced heart test last week injected new uncertainty into peacemaking, and Olmert has become the subject of yet another police investigation.
A statement from Olmert’s office said the probe involved campaign donations from a US citizen before he became prime minister in 2006.
Bush’s top diplomat, who met with Olmert after arriving in Israel late on Saturday, said it was too early for pessimism, despite a lack of obvious accomplishment in peace talks launched five months ago.
Rice suggested she would lean on Israel to yank West Bank roadblocks that Abbas says strangle the Palestinian economy.
“I understand that everyone — President Abbas, I, the president, would like to see things move more quickly,” Rice said. “That’s why we keep coming and pressing all the parties to meet their obligations.”
Palestinians complain that Israel has played bait-and-switch — removing tiny barriers and calling them roadblocks or only partially dismantling obstacles after pledging to pull them down.
Rice said she would question the “qualitative character” of some roadblocks Israel has already removed.
“Not all roadblocks are created equal,” Rice said with a wry smile. “We don’t want to get into a numbers game where you just remove X number of roadblocks but it’s not improving the lives of the Palestinians.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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