by MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press - Oct 14, 2007U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played down expectations for breakthroughs as she opened a critical round of Mideast shuttle diplomacy here Sunday and warned Israel against moves that might erode confidence in the process.
As she flew into the region from Russia, Rice said she hoped to help narrow gaps between the Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to forge an outline of an eventual peace deal in a joint statement to be presented at a U.S.-hosted international conference next month.
But she said she did not believe her visit would produce that statement or bring it to a point where invitations for the conference, expected to held in Annapolis, Md., in late November, could be issued.
"I don't expect out of these meetings that there will be any particular outcome in the sense of breakthroughs on the document," she told reporters aboard her plane.
"I would just warn in advance not to expect that because this is really a work in progress," she said.
"Even if the intentions are good and even if the actual events on the ground are intended to produce a certain kind of outcome, this is a very delicate time," Rice said. "It's just a time to be extremely careful."
Rice will shuttle between Israel and the West Bank over the next three days to, she said, "help them narrow differences that they may have about what the nature of this document has to be."
To build Arab support for the conference, she will also make a stop in Egypt on Tuesday and cap her trip in London on Thursday to see King Abdullah of Jordan who will be in the British capital. A planned stop in Amman, Jordan, was canceled because the monarch would not be there.
A key measure of the success of the conference will be how far the sides move beforehand toward resolving key areas of dispute, like final borders, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinians who lost their homes in the war that followed Israel's 1948 creation.
So far, the two sides are at odds over how detailed that peace deal framework should be, and both say no written agreement has been forged on any of these issues.
Israel is pressing for a vaguely worded document that would give it more room to maneuver. The Palestinians, by contrast, want a detailed preliminary agreement with a timetable for creating a Palestinian state.
Rice said she would be looking for "clarity on where the parties see themselves in the negotiations on their bilateral statement" that she said should at least touch on the key "final status" issues.
"I do think it's important that they address the core issues in some fashion," she said. "I also think it's important that the document be substantive enough that it points that there is a way forward toward the establishment of a Palestinian state."
But she added: "Obviously, as one would expect at this point in time, there are issues and differences to bridge in the nature of the document."
Rice, who is on her third visit to the region since Islamic Hamas militants violently took over the Gaza Strip in mid-June, would not rule out presenting suggestions for the two sides to consider but refused to say what those might be.
In recent days, Palestinian officials have said an agreement is nearer than ever, and that land swaps could solve the thorny issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said the time has come to stop letting excuses get in the way of peacemaking, and a top ally has been publicly discussing a subject that was long taboo — sharing sovereignty in Jerusalem.
Still, the road project and the two sides' disagreements on the refugee issue, a major reason for the collapse of the last round of peace talks in 2001, are clouding prospects for success.
Yet while Hamas' Gaza takeover has left Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas controlling just the West Bank, his expulsion of Hamas from government has in U.S. eyes, freed the moderate leader to pursue a peace deal that would create a Palestinian state.
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