US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to assure Palestinians today that she has heard their demands for a stronger US hand to guide peace efforts with Israel. However, Secretary Rice offered no new plans and gave few clues to how she views recent initiatives proposed by others.
"I have heard loud and clear the call for deeper American engagement in these processes," she said after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "You will have my commitment to do precisely that."
Seeking to strengthen President Abbas in his power struggle with the Palestinian Hamas faction, Secretary Rice said it is time "to look at the political horizon and begin to show to the Palestinian people how we might move toward a Palestinian state."
A proposed $85 million grant to train and equip the historically troubled security service loyal to President Abbas would come with strings attached, Secretary Rice said.
The Palestinian leader, whose Fatah faction lost elections a year ago to the Islamic militants of Hamas, said the weapons were needed to impose order after weeks of Fatah-Hamas fighting that has killed 35 people.
The dispute has alarmed some of President Abbas' Arab neighbors, including Jordan's King Abdullah II. Abdullah has warned of the possibility of three civil wars in the Middle East - in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon - and asked for renewed US diplomacy.
Despite signs of life in the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Secretary Rice encountered scepticism from both sides in two days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Mr Abbas rejected Israel's proposal of the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state with temporary borders and remonstrated with Secretary Rice that Israel has not followed through on promises made at his much-awaited meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last month.
"I have stressed to the secretary of state our rejection of temporary solutions, including provisional borders for our state," Mr Abbas said today. Palestinians fear such temporary frontiers would become final, leaving them with a truncated state.
Secretary Rice defended the decision to meet with hardline Israeli deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who told Secretary Rice that the Israeli Army will have to re-enter the Gaza Strip at some point, and that 30,000 UN troops are needed to secure the chaotic Palestinian territory on Israel's southern flank.
A controversial figure, Lieberman has in the past said Israel should assassinate Hamas' leadership, ignore the moderate Palestinian president and walk away from international peace efforts.
"I'm going to enlist the support of anybody I can to try and move forward a Palestinian state living at peace side by side with Israel," Rice said. "That is the goal here."
Rice tried to lower expectations for talks meant to help frame possible peace initiatives for Bush's remaining two years in office. Various ideas under consideration would rearrange elements of a US-backed peace plan dormant since its release in 2003.
Rice said the United States wants to "accelerate" the peace plan, but she has not given specifics.
The plan envisions a three-stage, three-year program to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The step-by-step approach seeks specific concessions from both sides before moving to new issues, meaning it quickly can bog down if the conditions are not met.
Before Secretary Rice arrived, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had seemed to endorse the notion of skipping some of the elements of the plan's first phase and jumping to the second phase, which would set up a placeholder state with temporary borders.
Livni gave a much vaguer description of that idea in a session with Rice on Saturday. Although Rice has not ruled it out, she has not explained how it would fit into the overall deal.
Palestinian officials in recent weeks have grown wary of the idea, believing it would enable Israel to usurp much of the West Bank, where Israel continues to build Jewish settlements.
"We oppose any temporary solutions, including a transitional stage, because we do not see it as a realistic option," Mr Abbas told a news conference in Ramallah after meeting with Rice.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wrote to the White House questioning whether the peace plan has outlived its usefulness and offering a counterproposal.
A presidential spokesman did not describe Mubarak's proposal, but said the Egyptian leader would discuss it when Rice visits on Monday.