Middle East:Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that they wanted to reach a Middle East peace agreement before President Bush leaves office in just over a year's time. But the secretary of state finished another Middle East visit without announcing a date for a planned peace summit.
Dr Rice said she hoped that the summit, due to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, would serve as a "launching pad" for Israeli-Palestinian talks that would culminate in the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
"Negotiations that I sincerely hope, as prime minister Olmert said last night, that could achieve their goals in the time remaining in the Bush administration," she said.
Mr Olmert said over the weekend that he believed an agreement could be reached during Mr Bush's term.
And that message was echoed by Mr Abbas after his meeting with Dr Rice in Ramallah yesterday. "All the parties agree and are determined to reach an agreement before the end of Bush's term in office and we are determined that this serves as our deadline and we are working towards that," he said.
For now, that's about all the sides seem to agree on. And with Dr Rice again leaving the region without issuing invitations to the planned summit, it now seems that the meeting, originally tentatively scheduled for November, will be pushed back to December.
The Palestinians have been pushing for a detailed statement of principles at the Annapolis conference to outline the contours of a solution to the Middle East conflict. They want the document to determine how all the key issues - such as borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees - will be resolved.
Israel, by contrast, does not want the joint document to go into detail, but prefers a statement of principles that is worded in general terms.
There is also no agreement over a deadline for the end of bilateral talks, following the Annapolis summit. "President Abbas suggested six months," Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian leader, said yesterday.
"Rice and Olmert want it to be the end of the Bush mandate, in a year." Dr. Rice would not commit yesterday to a date for the summit, saying only it would be held "before the end of the year."
What lay ahead, she added, was "very difficult work".
Mr Abbas tried to put a more positive spin on matters, saying that while negotiations were "difficult and will remain difficult until the last minute," there were "encouraging things taking place".