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JERUSALEM : Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas met on Monday on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's latest bid to boost the Middle East peace process.
As Rice headed back to the United States, Olmert, whose image has been hurt by fresh allegations of corruption, hosted Abbas at his official residence in Jerusalem for their third set of talks in less than a month.
The two have held several similar meetings aimed at advancing peace talks which have made little progress since they were restarted amid great fanfare at a US-sponsored conference in Annapolis last November.
A few hours before the Israeli-Palestian talks started, Olmert held a second meeting in less than 48 hours with Rice, who has urged Israel to take more concrete steps to ease movement and access for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev declined to provide any details about the meeting with Rice, saying only that "it was a one-on-one meeting that lasted about one hour."
The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have stumbled amid violence in Gaza and Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, which has prompted renewed US and international calls for a freeze on all settlement activity.
Rice, who arrived in Israel on Saturday evening, said she remained hopeful the two sides could strike a peace deal by the time US President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Bush is scheduled to visit Israel next week to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation.
On Sunday, Rice urged Israel to take further steps to improve the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, emphasising that US mediators would be looking for a "qualitative" impact as much as a "quantitative" one.
"We hope to improve the opportunities around the West Bank for people to have economic opportunity in a secure environment," she said after meeting Abbas in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.
On her last visit to the region, Rice secured an Israeli pledge to remove some 50 of the 500-plus roadblocks across the West Bank, but the Palestinians and the United Nations called the move largely insignificant.
Public radio reported on Monday that a key roadblock south of the West Bank town of Hebron would be removed on Friday, one day after Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary.
Following talks with Abbas on Sunday, Rice told reporters that improving conditions in the West Bank depended on "responsible actions" by the Palestinian Authority which she said "are really now taking place."
She singled out for praise the decision to deploy some 600 Palestinian police reinforcements to the town of Jenin as part of a security crackdown in the north of the territory aimed at building confidence with Israel.
Rice came to Israel and the West Bank after attending a meeting in London of the Middle East Quartet that comprises the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
The latest round of diplomacy came as the United Nations warned it would be forced to halt aid distribution in the Gaza Strip on Monday for the second time in less than two weeks after running out of fuel because of an Israeli blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.
It also coincided with mounting opposition calls for Olmert's resignation. The prime minister has vowed to press ahead with peace talks despite a new corruption probe against him -- the fifth such investigation since he formed his government two years ago, although one case has since been dismissed.
- AFP/ir
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