Rice to Meet Israeli and Palestinian Leaders

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will attend a three-way summit with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders some time in the coming weeks, US officials said today.

The announcement, a further indication that the Bush administration wants to restart the stalled Middle East peace process, came shortly after Ms Rice completed a brief visit to Israel and the West Bank.

A senior US official in Ms Rice's entourage said the "trilateral meeting" would be aimed at "having a conversation about the political horizon leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state."

No date was given for the talks, but they are not expected to take place during Ms Rice's current trip to the region, which ends on Friday.

Ms Rice spent more than two hours with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, before travelling to Egypt, where she is expected to seek support for the Iraqi government and for George Bush's plan to end sectarian bloodletting.

Mr Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, confirmed the Israeli leader had agreed "in principle" to attend the summit. The US official said the meeting was likely to take place in the next three or four weeks somewhere in the Middle East.

Mr Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, held their first official meeting last month. The Israeli leader promised a series of goodwill gestures to Mr Abbas, but the Palestinians have complained about Israel not following through on its pledges.

Ms Rice has been pressing Mr Olmert to take steps that could help bolster Mr Abbas in his power struggle with the Hamas Islamists who control the government.

Yesterday she met Mr Abbas, who later again rejected a key element in the peace proposals: that a Palestinian state be set up, initially with temporary borders. Mr Abbas said the move was not "a realistic option".

The road map, which has been largely ignored since it was introduced in 2003, entailed an end to violence, Palestinian elections, an Israeli freeze on settlement expansion and a provisional Palestinian state.

However, the Israeli housing ministry today published newspaper advertisements inviting bids for the construction of 44 homes in the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Maaleh Adumim, in contradiction to the peace efforts.

King Abdullah of Jordan yesterday told Ms Rice he wanted Washington to expend as much diplomatic energy on the Israeli-Palestinian problem as it had done on Iraq.