Time has come for Palestinian independence: Rice

The gathering is expected to take place next month, though a date hasn’t been announced. Amid such uncertainty, moderate Arab countries, whose participation is widely viewed as critical, have not committed to attending.

Tensions arose yesterday when Israeli PM Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet that he didn’t regard a joint declaration of principles for a future peace deal to be a prerequisite for the conference. The Palestinians said that without such a document, they wouldn’t attend the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland.

Rice suggested today that she was siding with the Palestinians on the need for such a document, but was cool to their idea, raised again by Abbas, to set a deadline for reaching a final peace deal.

“I am not certain that a timetable that says we have to complete X by Y time is where we want to go,” she told reporters. She said a joint document “does not have to be detailed in order to be serious.” She reiterated that “we frankly have better things to do than invite people to Annapolis for a photo-op.”

Convoy held up

Ramallah: The convoy of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was briefly held because of security reasons on her way to meet Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

On the road from Jerusalem to the West Bank political capital, Rice’s convoy was stopped for 15 minutes owing to security concerns, said an AFP journalist travelling with Rice.