CAIRO (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won public Egyptian support yesterday for a Mideast peace conference, thus boosting her bid to secure critical Arab backing for pushing Israel and the Palestinians to resume formal negotiations.
Pressing ahead with an intense four-day shuttle diplomacy mission, Miss Rice appeared to have persuaded Egypt of U.S. seriousness about organizing the conference to be held in Annapolis in November or December.
After Miss Rice’s talks here with President Hosni Mubarak and other top officials, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said at a joint press conference that she had given them “a lot of trust and confidence” about American intentions for the meeting.
“She has helped us to understand the American objective,” Mr. Aboul Gheit told reporters. “We feel encouraged regarding what we heard from Secretary Rice and promised her that we would help and we would help the parties as well in order to achieve the objective.”
Mr. Aboul Gheit said Miss Rice had assured the Egyptian government that President Bush was committed to forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before he leaves office.
The foreign minister had earlier spoken of postponing the conference, a meeting that has raised serious doubts on the part of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They all fear the gathering will be merely symbolic.
But Mr. Aboul Gheit also stressed the need for the conference to produce a document that will initiate formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with a “timeline” for results.
Miss Rice has said she does not think it’s necessary to agree on a timeline — also a demand of the Palestinians and an idea Israelis have rejected. But she has pledged to look at different ways to mark and memorialize progress during what all sides think will be contentious and lengthy negotiations.
Still, Miss Rice and her aides were buoyant after the meetings in Cairo, which precede a second round of U.S. talks with Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Ramallah today and discussions with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in London tomorrow.
A State Department official traveling with Miss Rice said securing support from Egypt, as well as, it is hoped, Jordan later in the week, would be instrumental in bringing “the rest of the relatively silent Arab world” on board for the conference.
The Bush administration is particularly interested in having Saudi Arabia, which does not have a peace deal with the Jewish state, attend the conference that it sees as a springboard for a comprehensive resolution to the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.
Miss Rice said she hoped a date for the meeting and invitations to attend could be announced soon.
The Palestinians want a document prepared ahead of the conference that deals with core issues of the peace negotiations, including the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem, the fate Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements.
But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants a vaguer joint statement and has said agreement on the matter should not be prerequisite for the Annapolis meeting.
Underscoring the difficulty of Miss Rice’s work, Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams met for a second time late Monday to try to thrash out details of the joint document, but made no headway.
Miss Rice also seemed to have won over Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa. He had derided the planned conference, saying the Americans were just hoping for a photo opportunity.
After seeing Miss Rice in Cairo, Mr. Moussa said he “felt American seriousness concerning the peace conference and a great desire on the American side to push matters positively toward a serious conference.”
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