US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left for Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday in another bid to push the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process forward.
Rice "will travel to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on August 24," said spokesman Sean McCormack.
McCormack said Rice's talks would include senior Israeli and Palestinian officials and would cover "ongoing efforts to create positive and lasting peace in the region and progress towards the shared goal of a peace agreement in 2008."
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP on August 17 that Rice will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, then hold three-way talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and senior Palestinian diplomat Ahmad Qorei.
The two sides formally relaunched the peace process after a seven-year hiatus at a US conference in November, with the goal of signing a full peace deal by the time President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.
The talks have made little visible progress since then, with both sides remaining deeply divided on core issues like the status of Occupied Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and final borders.
Rice was last in Israel in mid-June, when she strongly criticized the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank, saying they undermined the peace process. She has already visited the region 17 times in the past two years.
Coinciding with the secretary's trip will be a meeting in Cairo of leading Palestinian factions that will send envoys to Egypt for talks aimed at ending months of bitter infighting.
Nafid Azzam, a senior leader in Islamic Jihad, said his movement would send delegations to Cairo for talks aimed at reconciliation between the Fatah faction and their Hamas rival.
The two main Palestinian factions have been bitterly divided since June 2007, when Hamas seized power in Gaza after routing forces loyal to Abbas, the head of Fatah, in a week of bloody street battles.
Spokesmen for two smaller groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also said they would send envoys to Egypt next week.
Egypt was expected to hold separate talks with each group over the course of the week, but it was not immediately clear when or whether Hamas or Fatah would send their delegations to Cairo.
Prior to the announcement of Rice's latest mission, Livni played down the likelihood of meeting the stated US goal of getting a peace deal this year and warned that rushing negotiations could backfire.
"There is some kind of expectation of doing something before the end of the year," Livni said at a news conference with foreign journalists.
"I believe that the timeline is important, but what is more important is the content and the nature of the understanding that we can reach with the Palestinians," she said Livni went on to warn that "premature" efforts to "bridge gaps" between the two sides could lead to "clashes." "This can lead to misunderstandings, this can lead to violence," she said.
"Until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed."
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