Rice likely to visit Mideast soon

Washington: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is likely to visit the Middle East soon and sees an opening for Arab-Israeli peace despite the Palestinian power struggle.

Rice will travel to the Middle East this month to try to promote peacemaking, senior European diplomat Javier Solana said after they met on Thursday.

Asked if Rice were optimistic about prospects for peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians, Solana told reporters: "I don't think that optimism is the word. We have to stick to the word realism."

Rice reviewed her plans at the State Department with Solana, the senior European Union diplomat who will make his own, separate trip to the area this month. They also had lunch at the White House with Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush's national security adviser.

"We will try to see how we can give a push to the peace process," Solana said. He declined to say whether Rice would try to set up a peace conference

"I would expect in the near future that she probably will travel to the Middle East," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, saying he could not provide details on when or where she may travel.

McCormack said Rice would focus on three issues during the trip - making progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, promoting stability in Lebanon and finding ways to support the Iraqi government to "achieve a more stable, secure situation in Iraq."

"This next trip is going to be more of intensive discussions and really, sort of, doing a deep dive on what are the possibilities and how might we partner together to move forward," he said of the effort on Israeli-Palestinian peace.

"One of the prerequisites for really making progress on a political horizon between the Israelis and Palestinians is the Palestinians sorting out (their) political differences," McCormack said. "That doesn't mean that in the interim you cannot work with those who are partners for peace."

If she travels to Israel and the Palestinian territories, it would be Rice's eighth visit to the region in less than two years. Rice's last visit was in late November, when she met Abbas in the West Bank town of Jericho and Olmert in Jerusalem.

McCormack said Rice would not travel before US President George W. Bush gives a speech outlining his new approach toward Iraq. No date has been announced for that speech.