Israel resists Rice plan for talks on peace settlement

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, postponed a press conference yesterday amid signs of Israeli resistance to her plan for parallel talks on the possible shape of a future settlement of the Middle East conflict. Ms Rice has proposed holding separate talks with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, designed to promote "a political horizon" which could define what lay at the end of any putative peace process.

But a press conference here at which she was to have outlined the plan after discussions with both Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas was deferred until today, apparently to allow time for further deliberations with the Israeli leadership. The US embassy said, however, that it was only a "timing change".

A US official said last night that Mr Olmert agreed to resume face-to-face talks with Mr Abbas in a possible move towards restarting substantive peace talks. The official said Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas would initially hold low-key "confidence-building" sessions in the wake of the moderate Palestinian leader's new power-sharing deal with Hamas militants.

Mr Olmert has been saying that talks should be confined to issues of security and the "need to fight terrorism", an Israeli official said, adding that the Israeli view had been strongly reinforced by its strong disappointment that Mr Abbas had sanctioned the unity government with Hamas without the latter agreeing to international conditions for recognition.

Partly to bolster Mr Abbas's political position, Ms Rice is seeking to establish a process for gradually smoking out the outlines of a possible future agreement on territory and security. It is not yet clear whether this would include discussions on the most contentious issues such as Jerusalem and refugees as well as borders.

At the same time, Ms Rice has indicated that she is not trying to abandon the internationally agreed, if largely moribund, road map which requires Palestinian progress in disarming militant groups ­ as well as the dismantling of illegal settlement outposts by Israel ­ before further substantive progress can be made. Nevertheless, the Israeli official said that some elements of her plan were "very problematic".

Israeli concerns also cast doubt on the other key initiative under way in the region, the intention of Arab states in Saudi Arabia this week to relaunch the 2002 Beirut declaration, which promised pan-Arab recognition of Israel in return for Israel withdrawing to its 1967 borders.

Israel ­ and particularly its Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni ­ has identified the declaration's commitment to "a right of return" of the families of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948 as a key obstacle to any progress based on the initiative, and has urged the Arab leaders to change the relevant clause.

There was no immediate confirmation of earlier hints by the Saudi Foreign Minister that the summit might be prepared to declare that if Israel accepted the initiative, it would be prepared to modify its stance in future negotiations. The Jordanian Foreign Minister, Abdelelah al-Khatib, told Reuters after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Riyadh: "The Arabs have agreed to reactivate the Arab initiative without changes."

Another shadow was cast over Ms Rice's efforts by the arrival yesterday of 2,000 Jewish settlers at the northern West Bank settlement of Homesh ­ evacuated in August 2005 under Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.