Rice to return to Mideast as Gaza withdrawal shaky

By Saul Hudson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
will visit the Middle East next week to prod Israel and the
Palestinians to stick to the plan for the Jewish state to
withdraw from Gaza despite a surge of violence.

The top U.S. diplomat will make her third trip to Israel
and the Palestinian territories since February as a 5-month-old
truce has apparently collapsed after a suicide bombing and air
strikes and rocket attacks in the last few days.

“We’re closely engaged with both sides and we encourage
them to take appropriate steps to restore order and calm,”
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on
Friday. “They need to make (a) maximum effort … both
individually and working together, to ensure that this
withdrawal is a successful withdrawal.”

Rice has said U.S. diplomacy in the region is focused on
helping make the scheduled withdrawal of Israeli settlers from
occupied Gaza a success as a way to spur peace moves.

Rice, who is expected to arrive in Israel late in the week,
spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Friday about
the spike in violence following a similar call earlier in the
week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, he said.

Even before this week’s violence, the world’s major powers
had urged the sides to intensify their cooperation over the
pullout from the Mediterranean coastal strip because they have
hammered out few agreements on how to implement the plan.

One of the worst surges in violence since Israel and the
Palestinian Authority declared an end to hostilities in
February has raised the possibility of disruptions to Israel’s
pullout.

On Friday, Israel killed several Hamas gunmen in air
strikes in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian rocket attack
that followed a Palestinian suicide bombing in an Israeli town
earlier in the week.

U.S. PEACEMAKING

Rice’s trip is a reflection of intensified U.S. involvement
in Middle East peacemaking in President Bush’s second term
following the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, who Washington called an obstacle to peace.

Rice’s predecessor, Colin Powell, visited the region just
once in his last 20 months in the post.

On her trip that starts on Tuesday, Rice will also make her
first visit as secretary of state to Africa, stopping in
Senegal, for a regional trade conference, and Sudan, to work
with a new government on consolidating peace across the
continent’s largest country.

In almost six months in her job, Rice has already made
repeated trips to Europe, Asia and the Middle East but her
senior diplomat for Africa, Connie Newman, dismissed any
suggestion that Rice, the first black woman to hold her post,
did not consider Africa important.

“They know of her heritage but more importantly they know
that she is willing to use her power in their interests,”
Newman told Reuters.