Rice to outline help for Palestinians

JERUSALEM - Condoleezza Rice is expected to offer help today to end anti-Israeli militant attacks during the first visit in three years of a United States Secretary of State to the seat of the Palestinian Authority.

Rice was to detail a pledge to boost aid for security forces and discuss plans for a resumption of a co-ordinated ceasefire accord between the US, Israel and the Palestinians.

Rice yesterday suggested to Israeli PM Ariel Sharon a plan involving the US monitoring an accord, which could be clinched at a summit this week in Egypt.

Rice was to meet President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, the home of predecessor Yasser Arafat.

The visit shows the Bush Administration is eager to bolster newly elected Abbas with measures to support his efforts to rein in violence. Rice praised a new Palestinian leadership that has "expressed its desire for a peaceful future".

Israel has generally been wary of international involvement in the Palestinian territories, worried it would limit its ability to respond to attacks. The last monitoring group involved the CIA but it stopped after three Americans were killed in 2003.

Palestinian leaders have generally welcomed involvement by the international community.

In Jerusalem, Rice said Israel must take "hard decisions" and encouraged it to press its Gaza pullout plan and not to seize lands around Jerusalem.

The peace credentials of Abbas were boosted yesterday when his ruling Fatah movement reissued a call for a mutual ceasefire with Israel.

The Revolutionary Council said its militias would refrain from attacking civilians inside Israel, and was ready for "a mutual ceasefire" in lands Israel captured in the 1967 war.

Rice went out of her way in her first meetings to caution Israel against taking steps that would undermine Abbas, proclaiming it was a "time of optimism because fundamental changes are under way."

During talks with Israeli Foreign Minister, Sylvan Shalom, Rice praised Israel for its response to the fragile fortnight-old truce. Shalom had earlier told her that: "We all want [Abbas] to succeed."

Shalom is reported to have told the Secretary of State that Abbas had done "very positive things", had deployed security forces in Gaza and largely prevented Qessam rockets being fired into Israel. But he also said Abbas had failed to disarm or arrest militants.

Nor had Abbas, reportedly at loggerheads with his Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia, yet formed a new Cabinet, Shalom pointed out.

After their meeting, Shalom said that he had laid out Israel's demands of the Palestinians.

"If the Palestinians do not do everything to halt the smuggling of weapons through tunnels, close the tunnels, close the weapons workshops, gather up illegal weapons - we would simply be giving the violent groups time to regroup and then carry out terror attacks that could collapse the whole process," he said.

While stressing the fundamental importance of Israel going ahead with its plan to disengage from Gaza, the Secretary of State was said to have stressed the importance of both the Israelis and the Palestinians honouring their commitments to the road map to peace.

Israeli officials acknowledged that was a clear, if implicit, reference to the need to dismantle illegal outposts and settlements as well as the Palestinian obligation to begin disarming and dismantling the infrastructure of armed factions.

- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT