US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday Palestinians should soon have their own state, though she has made it clear she does not expect a breakthrough before Barack Obama moves into the White House.
"They are dignified people and I am certain the day is coming soon when they have a state that will be in accordance with that great national dignity," she said after meeting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, the West Bank's political capital.
Rice has nevertheless tacitly admitted that Israel and the Palestinians were unlikely to reach a peace deal by the time US President George W. Bush's mandate ends on January 20, despite earlier pledges to seek agreement by the end of this year.
"The distance to peace has been narrowed although peace has not been achieved," she said at Friday's news conference. The top US diplomat then headed to Jordan for a brief meeting over dinner with King Abdullah ahead of a summit between the international peace mediators in Egypt on Sunday.
In the absence of an accord, Rice is pushing the two sides to define the outlines of a deal before she hands over the thorny Middle East dossier to an Obama administration. "One of the things we must do is that we must show... that Annapolis has laid the foundation for the establishment of the state of Palestine," she said. Rice had played a key role in reviving the peace process at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, one year ago after a seven-year hiatus. "The Annapolis process is vital, it is vibrant and it continues," she said, even though little tangible process has been achieved, with core issues dealing with the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state still to be resolved.
Rice criticised continued construction activity in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, calling it damaging to the atmosphere of negotiations - "and the parties' actions should encourage confidence, not undermine it."
Peace efforts have also been hobbled by the division of the Palestinian territories into a West Bank where the secular Abbas holds sway and a Gaza Strip run by the Islamist Hamas movement. The slow-moving peace process has been further affected by the political turmoil surrounding the resignation of Israel's scandal-plagued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that led to the scheduling of snap elections in February.
Since her arrival on Thursday, Rice has held talks with Olmert as well as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the two frontrunners in the race for the prime minister's job. Olmert has congratulated Obama over the telephone and discussed "the need to continue and advance the peace process, while maintaining the security of the state of Israel," his office said.
Rice was set to head to Jordan for a working dinner with King Abdullah. She also plans to visit Jenin to highlight the successful deployment of Palestinian security forces in the former flashpoint city in the northern West Bank. She will end her four-day visit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh at a meeting of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
Rice said the Israelis and the Palestinians were expected to reaffirm their commitment to a two-state solution when they brief the international mediators. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, speaking after meeting Rice on Friday, issued a thinly veiled call for the US administration not to rule out a possible military attack against Iran.
"We don't rule out any option. We recommend others don't rule out any option either," Barak said. Israel considers Iran its main strategic threat because of its uranium enrichment programme, which it believes is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Tehran says its atomic project is purely peaceful.
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