US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wound up a weekend trip to spur Israeli-Palestinian talks with a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday morning, and Olmert was scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later in the day.
An Olmert aide said no public statement was expected after his meeting with Rice, who at a news conference with Abbas on Sunday demanded that Israel do more to ease life for Palestinians in the West Bank by removing roadblocks.
Facing Palestinian frustration at the pace of the negotiations, Rice made unusually direct remarks on Sunday about the consequences of Israeli construction and roadblocks in the West Bank. Palestinian claims that Israel is deliberately expanding Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a state have dampened hopes for a peace deal before US President George W. Bush leaves office in January.
PHOTO: AFP
Asked about settlements, Rice said she “continues to raise with the Israelis the importance of creating an atmosphere that is conducive to negotiations.”
The twin issues of settlements and roadblocks were likely to be on the agenda at the Olmert-Abbas meeting in Jerusalem.
“That means doing nothing, certainly, that would suggest that there is any prejudicing of the final terms” of a deal setting up a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank, Rice said.
Israel isn’t trying to expand settlements as land grab before an eventual withdrawal, the country’s senior diplomat said.
“I can assure you Israel has no hidden agenda,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
Livni pointed to Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as proof that Jewish settlements “are not obstacles” if the government decides it has a larger aim of peace with the Palestinians. Israel dismantled 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza when it pulled out.
Rice emphasized that a year-end goal for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is still achievable, even though both sides question whether the target is realistic.
Abbas has sounded increasingly pessimistic. He accuses Israel of undermining talks by continuing to build in Jewish settlements on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state, and refusing to remove hundreds of military checkpoints that dot the West Bank.
The Bush administration is serving as a proctor for the first direct high-level peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians since talks broke down amid violence more than seven years ago. The closed-door talks have yielded no obvious successes, although all sides say the atmosphere is good.
Rice shuttled between Israel and the West Bank, passing Jewish settlements and illegal outposts on the way, to prod for progress ahead of Bush’s visit to Israel later this month. He is marking the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS