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WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice underlined the need for a quick resolution to the Palestinian question as she prepared for trilateral talks Wednesday with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
She acknowledged difficulty in achieving a Middle East peace deal by the end of the year as targeted under US-brokered talks, but noted growing recognition that the Palestinian issue should be resolved swiftly for regional security.
"The Middle East is not going to get better without the creation of a Palestinian state to live side-by-side with Israel in peace, security and democracy," she said.
"It simply isn't going to get better. And so the question is, if not now, when?," she said amid growing pessimism about US President George W. Bush's desire to end the Middle East conflict before he left office in January 2009.
Rice spoke ahead of three way talks in Washington Wednesday with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia, who have been meeting at least once a week for several months.
They are part of negotiations held since the Israelis and Palestinians committed to forge a comprehensive deal by end of 2008 during a conference Bush hosted in Annapolis, Maryland in November.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday threw cold water on hopes of a quick deal when he said that he did not think the two sides could agree on the crucial issue of Jerusalem this year.
Qureia on Tuesday also highlighted the importance of the Jerusalem question, saying there could be no deal without its resolution.
"There's no (Palestinian) state without Jerusalem and no agreement without Jerusalem," he told reporters after talks with Rice.
Israel captured mostly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and annexed it shortly afterwards, declaring it Israel's eternal and undivided capital.
But the claim has never been recognized by the international community or the Palestinians, who have demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Rice said she wanted to continue prodding the Israelis and Palestinians to "find points of convergence."
She cautioned however that "nobody should underestimate the difficulty of doing that," citing Jerusalem as a critical issue that would ultimately have to be resolved.
The chief US diplomat, who the White House said will be travelling to the Middle East "pretty soon," reiterated that Washington would "work as hard as we can to encourage the parties to resolve the differences between them.
"They are working very, very hard. They are also working very seriously," she said.
Rice is reportedly anxious to get the two sides to agree on a document of understanding on such key issues as borders for a Palestinian state and right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, ahead of the United Nations General Assembly session in September.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stressed that Washington remained committed to achieving by year end its goal of a settlement on all "final status issues," including the Jerusalem question, but not at the expense of any costly breakdown of the peace process.
"We don't want to push the process to a point where it breaks down irretrievably and you have foreclosed the possibility of a solution for the two sides," McCormack said.
"But, on the other hand, we are going to push the process ... to press the tolerances of the process," he said. - AFP
