JERUSALEM (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to meet Palestinian and Israeli officials on Friday as she pressed both sides to define the contours of a peace deal they are unlikely to achieve before Barack Obama takes office.
She was to hold talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank's political capital of Ramallah after meeting Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
On the first day of her Middle East trip on Thursday, Rice met Israel's outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to discuss the peace process she helped launch at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, one year ago.
Rice and the White House have made it clear they have little hope of a breakthrough before US President George W. Bush's mandate ends on January 20, despite the Annapolis agreement to seek a deal by the end of this year.
In the absence of an accord, Rice is pushing the two sides to define the outlines of a deal before she hands over the thorny dossier to an Obama administration.
"I think that whatever happens by the end of the year, you've got a firm foundation for quickly moving forward to a conclusion," she said at the start of her four-day regional tour.
"I think at some point it will be important to work to wrap all of that work up, one way or another."
But asked whether that means she will have a document to present to the new administration, Rice said: "How we do that is still an open question."
Little tangible process has been made since Annapolis, with core issues dealing with the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state still to be resolved.
The talks have been hobbled by continued construction in Jewish settlements and the division of the Palestinian territories into a West Bank where the secular Abbas holds sway and a Gaza Strip run by the Islamist Hamas movement.
The slow-moving peace process has been further affected by the political turmoil surrounding the resignation of the scandal-plagued Olmert that led to the scheduling of snap elections for February 20.
"Obviously Israel is in the middle of elections and that is a constraint on the ability of any government to conclude what is the core conflict for Israel and the Palestinians," Rice said on Thursday.
Earlier Olmert congratulated Obama over the telephone and discussed "the need to continue and advance the peace process, while maintaining the security of the state of Israel," his office said.
Rice was to travel briefly to Jordan on Friday for a working dinner with King Abdullah. She also plans to visit Jenin in the northern West Bank to highlight the successful deployment of Palestinian security forces in the former flashpoint city.
She will end her four-day visit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh at a meeting of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
The Israelis and the Palestinians will brief the international mediators on the peace talks.
"We expect that the parties will reaffirm their commitment to a two-state solution, to negotiations toward that goal, and to a process that builds on the important progress that has been achieved in previous agreements and understandings," Rice said.
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