Rice: Bush approach best to achieve Mideast peace

[December 16, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the Mideast peace process President Bush launched is the best chance yet to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and should not be dropped just because a year-end deadline for a deal is being missed.

Rice told The Associated Press in an interview that the negotiations begun at the Annapolis conference last November have produced solid results and that the U.S. expects strong support at the United Nations this week for a U.N. Security Council resolution that "enshrines" the initiative in the international system.

"That's a really rather simple resolution but it does put Annapolis in that long litany now of important Security Council resolutions supporting the peace process," she said. "The Security Council will make clear that that is the basis going (forward)."

The Security Council is expected on Tuesday to vote on a U.S.-Russian-sponsored resolution that calls on the Israelis and Palestinians "to fulfill their obligations" under the Annapolis process and for all nations and international groups "to contribute to an atmosphere conducive to negotiations."

Rice said she believed that "a lot of the fundamentals are in place" for the incoming Obama administration to work with to achieve peace and noted that Israelis and Palestinians have said they think they have accomplished more through Annapolis than they did during the last sustained negotiations during the Clinton administration in 2000.

Many Clinton-era Mideast advisers are part of President-elect Obama's foreign policy transition team and there has been concern that they may want to try their own approach to Mideast peacemaking.

Rice declined to discuss her specific recommendations to Obama's advisers, including Secretary of State-designee Hillary Rodham Clinton, but made clear that she believed Annapolis should not be abandoned as the two sides have made "significant progress on the core issues."

"I just think that the Annapolis process, because it is both bottom-up and top-down, is the most likely chance that we have to bring about the two-state solution that the president has talked so much about," she said.

The Security Council has not since 2003 passed a resolution on the Middle East that calls for a collective peace by insisting on a two-nation solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians.

[Associated Press]

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