JERUSALEM -President Bush will meet separately with newly elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and says people are becoming more trustworthy in striving for peace in the Middle East.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the meetings yesterday after two days of talks in Jerusalem and the West Bank. She met with both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders as part of her first trip abroad as secretary of state ahead of the two men's closely watched first meeting as potential peace partners Tuesday in Egypt.
Both sides said Israeli and Palestinian leaders would declare a formal end to more than four years of fighting at the summit.
The meetings in the United States later in the spring are the clearest signals that the Bush administration sees hope for peace after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
This is the most promising moment of progress between Palestinians and Israelis in recent years
Rice said. The United States is determined to do all that we can to take advantage of this moment of opportunity in the weeks and months ahead.
She also said that a U.S. Army general would be a go-between for Israelis and Palestinians, the first such U.S. presence in more than three years. Lt. Gen. William Ward will help improve Palestinian security forces, an important underpinning for the eventual goal of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Washington wrote off Arafat as a peacemaker and all but ignored him in the last years of his life.
Rice was the first high-level U.S. official in years to visit the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah, but she still kept her distance from Arafat's flower-laden tomb. Her motorcade zipped past the site and on to the crumbling complex of buildings where Arafat holed up under intermittent Israeli shelling before his death last year in Paris.
Abbas, a moderate, took power in a largely peaceful election last month. He still faces
challenges to stop violence by Palestinian militants.
In Washington, Bush indicated that the election was a turning point.
Abbas' commitment to fighting off terror has been impressive, Bush said. I've been impressed by what he is his public statements.
Bush also praised Israelis, who he said went out of their way to make sure that people were allowed to go to the polls.
Still, Rice sounded a cautious note yesterday.
We have had other times of great optimism and it is in fact a lesson that times of great optimism can slip away unless all parties are prepared to really carry through on their responsibilities
she said.
In that vein, Rice took a slightly harder public line on Israeli obligations yesterday.
With Arafat gone, it is easier for the United States to ask Israel to make concessions on settlements and outposts in land that will eventually be fully controlled by Palestinians, as well as on the route of a partially built security barrier and control of portions of Jerusalem.
Our understanding is that the commitments on the dismantlement of outposts stands
that it is important that those commitments be honored
and in fact I've said that today
Rice said.
Adopting Palestinian terminology, Rice also said the United States opposed a continued effort to create facts on the ground
a reference to expansion of Israeli settlements that, once built and populated, are difficult to remove.
Ward will make his first visit to the region within a few weeks, but it is not clear if he will be based there. Part of his job would be to monitor a cease-fire.
General Ward will be helpful in making certain that the parties understand each other
if necessary making certain that we understand what the parties are doing to live up to their obligations so that those can be raised at their appropriate political levels
Rice said.
