US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice kicks off a Middle East tour to take another crack at reviving the peace process but without a specific plan to resolve the conflict. She was due to hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders before heading to Arab capitals to rally support for a new US strategy in Iraq and to counter Iran’s alleged interference in the war-ravaged country.Rice has said she has no specific plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is coming to listen.“I am not coming with a proposal. I am not coming with a plan,” she told the accompanying press during a stopover in Shannon, Ireland on Saturday. “A couple of things are crystal clear: if you don’t lay groundwork very well, it is not going to succeed.“And I think no plan can be ‘Made in America’. There are too many important stakeholders and any progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front is going to require all of the parties.”Rice is expected to meet Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday before traveling to Ramallah on Sunday to talk with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.She will then meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday.Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem have suggested that Rice may not be pushing a firm plan because of the political weakness of both Olmert and Abbas.Olmert returned home from a trip to China on Friday amid further allegations of corruption at the highest levels of Israeli politics and speculation that a new investigation may be opened into his own affairs.As for Abbas, he and his Fatah party are engaged in a deadly power struggle with the ruling Islamist movement Hamas that has left more than 30 people dead over the past month and completely shifted the Palestinian focus away from ending the Israeli occupation. A statement from Hamas on Saturday said Rice’s trip would “only contribute to creating divisions and dissensions in the region” and warned against “attempts by the Americans and certain parties to force . the Palestinians to make fundamental concessions.”Prime minister Ismail Haniya accused Washington of trying to foment a Palestinian civil war. “The American and Israeli policies seek to push the Palestinian people towards civil war and internal conflict so that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a televised address.-Albion Land
