Abbas, Rice Urge Israel To Ease West Bank Terms

RAMALLAH, West Bank — President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and visiting Secretary of State Rice urged Israel to meet its pledges to remove roadblocks that curb economic activity in the West Bank.“We hope to continue to improve the opportunities around the West Bank for people to have economic opportunity in a secure environment,” Ms. Rice told reporters yesterday at a joint press briefing after a meeting at Mr. Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah.Mr. Abbas and Ms. Rice, who is making her fourth trip to the Middle East since a November peace conference in Annapolis, Md., are pressing the Israeli government to ease living conditions in the West Bank. The talks are aimed at fostering incremental steps that will lead to a peace agreement by year’s end for a separate Palestinian Arab state.Prime Minister Olmert said earlier yesterday that he plans to meet separately with Ms. Rice and Mr. Abbas today. Messrs. Olmert and Abbas have held periodic meetings at the urging of Ms. Rice and President Bush, who aims to achieve a peace agreement by the time he leaves office in January.Ms. Rice, 53, said she raised the issue of Israeli barriers in the West Bank with Mr. Olmert, whom she met for dinner Saturday, and with the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, yesterday morning.America is concerned that Israeli efforts are falling short of significant improvements in freedom of movement for Palestinian Arabs, choking their donor-dependent economy and weakening the political position of Mr. Abbas.“Without some movement there, the Palestinian economy is simply on life support,” a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who served on an international advisory panel for drafting a Palestinian Arab constitution, Nathan Brown, said. He’s a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.Hamas, the Islamic militant group designated as a terrorist organization by America and European Union, scorned Ms. Rice’s visits as just buying time for Israel to expand its hold on Palestinian Arab territories.A three-way meeting she conducted earlier yesterday with Mr. Barak and Prime Minister Fayyad of the Palestinian Authority “aims at more delaying to grant more time for the benefit of the Zionist entity,” a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoom, said in a written statement. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.Mr. Abbas said that, in addition to removal of road blocks, Israel must halt the building and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to comply with the 2002 “road map” for Middle East peace.“We reiterated today to Dr. Rice the need for Israel to freeze all settlement activities, including natural growth activities, and to remove all illegal settlement posts,” Mr. Abbas, 73, said as he and Ms. Rice stood beneath a banner of the Palestinian Arab flag and portraits of him and the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Abbas, Rice Urge Israel To Ease West Bank Terms

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