STATE DEPARTMENT - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leaving Washington for another Middle East trip aimed at spurring progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.  She’ll meet separately with Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, along with leading Arab moderates. 

U.S. officials are cautioning in advance to expect no breakthroughs from the Rice mission, her third to the region so far this year.

But the Secretary is seeking at least incremental progress toward the two state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict that President Bush set forth as a U.S. policy goal in 2002.

Rice goes first to Aswan in southern Egypt to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and with foreign ministers of the “quartet” of moderate Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Sunday she has separate meetings with Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank and with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem.

Monday she goes to Amman to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah and has another set of meetings with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack says the Secretary will prod the two sides to act on problems of day-to-day concern such as checkpoint restrictions for Palestinians, but to focus also on the so-called “political horizon” - what a settlement of the regional conflict would entail.

He said Rice will urge her Arab colleagues to reaffirm the 2002 Arab League peace initiative that offered Israel normal relations with the Arab world if it returned to 1967 borders and allowed for return of Palestinian refugees.

Source:  VOA News