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| Rice to lay ground for Mideast peac |
| US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will begin laying the ground for a Mideast peace conference in a visit to Israel on Wednesday
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 1-August-2007
10:35:49 AM |
| US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will begin laying the ground for a Mideast peace conference in a visit to Israel on Wednesday, hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians closer to renewing talks.
Building on warming ties between Israel and moderate Arab countries, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said on Wednesday that Israel hopes ''many Arab countries will attend this international meeting, including Saudi Arabia.''
The statement came in reaction to an announcement on Wednesday by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal that his country would seriously consider attending the gathering if invited.
Speaking at a press conference with Rice and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Saud said his government would ''look very closely and very hard at attending'' if the conference dealt with ''issues of real substance, not form.''
A meeting between Israeli and Saudi representatives would be a major diplomatic breakthrough. Though Israel and Saudi Arabia are both US allies, representatives of the countries have never officially met and Saudi Arabia has never recognized the Jewish state.
Rice's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, part of a wider tour of the US's regional allies, is her first since the Islamic group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June.
Since then, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has run the West Bank with a moderate government led by his Fatah movement, and has won broad international backing while Hamas remains largely isolated.
Olmert's office said on Wednesday that the regional meeting would also be able to ''grant an umbrella to the bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians.''
Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Rice said she was ''encouraged by the attitude that I have seen here among all of the parties about the prospects of this international meeting.''
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