Rice: Olmert, Abbas agree to informal talks on Palestinian state

[oberliner]

At the end of her Middle East tour, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) agreed to "informal talks" about the nature of a future Palestinian state.

In a conversation with U.S. reporters who traveled with her, Rice said talks in the current climate are much more likely to reach an Israeli-Palestinian agreement than was the case in the 2000 Camp David talks, due to political changes on both sides.

Rice also called on the sides not to stall on the first phase of the road map and to discuss the broader issues. She mentioned talks on security arrangements and the nature of the democratic institutions in the Palestinian state.

Rice plans to return to the region in early February to meet with Olmert and Abbas, and the U.S. is currently looking for a neutral site to host the tripartite meeting without mandating a fourth participant. It is therefore unlikely the summit will take place in Egypt or Jordan.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/815653.html