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BRUSSELS: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
wound up a brief Middle East trip after apparently yielding towards
a ceasefire so as to resume peace talks that were suspended by the
Palestinians after an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip that cost
many lives.
Rice, who arrived late Wednesday
in Brussels for a NATO meeting, secured a promise from Israel and
the Palestinians to resume talks despite discord over Israel’s
continuing military strikes in Gaza that have killed 125
Palestinians.
“I’ve been informed by the
parties that they intend to resume the negotiations,” Rice said at
the end of a two-day trip aimed at mending peace efforts hobbled by
the deadly Israeli blitz on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. “The two
sides are in contact with each other how to bring this about.”
The secretary of state never
mentioned the words “truce” or “ceasefire”, which would
imply negotiations with radical Islamic movement Hamas, but
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas implied as much when he said Rice
was involved in the efforts to achieve a truce, along with Egypt,
which has often played the role of mediator in the Middle East.
“I spoke today again with
Secretary of State Rice and she will send an envoy, David Welch, to
Cairo where intense efforts are being deployed with a view to
reaching a truce,” the US-backed Abbas said Wednesday.
He confirmed he intended to
resume the talks he froze over the weekend to protest the attacks on
Gaza. Israel has been insisting the talks carry on despite the
strikes.
“The president affirms that he
has the intention to restart the peace process and the negotiations
to lead to the end of the occupation and the creation of a
Palestinian state,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told Agence
France-Presse. “President Abbas appreciates the efforts made by
Secretary Rice to preserve the peace process and the negotiations,
notably to bring about a reciprocal truce with the help of Egypt.”
The United States, which
considers Hamas a terrorist movement and has sought for two years to
isolate it totally, had up to then rejected Abbas’s calls for a
start to talks with the Islamist group.
Earlier in the day, Abbas had
said a ceasefire was a condition for the resumption of the
negotiations, but Rice insisted the two were not tied.
Abbas has had no real power in
Gaza since June, when Hamas fighters drove his forces from the
territory in a week of bloody street battles.
Israel made it clear it would
only stop its military strikes if it were no longer targeted by
near-daily rocket attacks from militants in Gaza, a tiny, isolated,
and impoverished enclave that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
“If there is no Qassam
fire on Israel, there will be no Israeli attacks on Gaza,” said
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “We do not get up in the morning and
think how to attack Gaza. We want to prevent fire on Israeli
civilians.”
Militants fired 11 rockets at
southern Israel on Wednesday, the Israeli army said, adding that
seven of them exploded inside the country but that they had caused
no casualties.
The defense ministry said Barak
had met with top government and military legal experts to review
options on responding to attacks from Gaza. It quoted sources in his
office as saying he was seeking to learn whether international law
would allow him to give advance warning to residents in Gaza areas
to evacuate so that the army would have a free hand to carry out
reprisal attacks while keeping the risks of endangering civilians to
a minimum.
--AFP
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