Rice to meet Solana in bid to restart Middle East peace process

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will on Monday (29 January) discuss with EU officials efforts to restart the Middle East peace process, during a visit to Brussels.

Rice will be in Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers who will discuss the need to send more troops to Afghanistan. She will also meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to discuss preparations for a meeting of the Middle East Quartet in Washington on 2 February. This is the first meeting at foreign minister level since September 2006.

The EU has pressed its Quartet partners - the US, the United Nations and Russia - for months to re-establish the group, which began to lose influence during Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in May 2005.

After the US agreed to re-launch the Quartet, the group is coming increasingly under pressure to make tangible progress in the peace process.

During a two-day visit to Brussels this week (22-23 January), Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, called on the Quartet to go beyond issuing statements.

EU diplomats say that the Washington meeting will focus on restarting the process by bringing Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for talks, as well as strengthening the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas domestically, by improving the lives of ordinary Palestinians. Israel’s recent decision to release $100 million (€77m) of Palestinian tax receipts, a long-standing EU demand, has been welcomed in Brussels.

But some European diplomats are warning that the wider situation in the Middle East, including the worsening security situation in Iraq and tensions linked to Iran, could hamper efforts to get the peace process back on track.

During a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday (22 January) ministers discussed the link between US efforts to gain help from Arab states in stabilising Iraq and Arab states’ calls for the US to re-engage in the Middle East conflict.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will on Monday (29 January) discuss with EU officials efforts to restart the Middle East peace process, during a visit to Brussels.