Saudi Arabia calls on int'l community to stop Israeli violations

Rice in Mideast to push for resumption of Palestinian-Israeli talks

Palestinian president demands U.S. guarantees, genuine truce

AL council declares opposition to Israel's UNSC nomination

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's talks with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice focused on the Israeli military operations against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the situation in Lebanon and ways to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, Egypt's foreign minister said.

The one-hour meeting covered the latest developments in Lebanon, Iraq and Darfur, Ahmed Abul-Gheit said.

President Mubarak referred to the Israeli attacks on Gaza, saying Israel should not target Palestinian civilians, Abul-Gheit told reporters. "We believe that our relationship with Egypt is an important one,'' Rice said in announcing that she had waived restrictions on the aid to Egypt. The issue was a point of contention before her arrival in Cairo.

Rice said she was deeply concerned over the innocent people in the Gaza Strip, adding that she will exert utmost efforts to confront the inhumane situation in the Strip.

Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians should stop, she said, holding Hamas responsible for the situation in the coastal Strip following the movement's illegitimate control of Palestinian institutions creating chaos.

The Palestinian-Israeli peace process should continue, she said, adding reaching stability and security lies in the establishment of two states living alongside in peace.

She said her visit to the region aims at focusing on the resumption of negotiations, improvement of conditions on the ground in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and the implementation of the roadmap by both parties.

Talks with President Mubarak covered the issue of Darfur and the Lebanese crisis, she said.

A Lebanese president should be elected in conformity with the constitution and without any foreign interference, she added.

The Palestinian-Israeli peace process and the negotiations should continue in a calm atmosphere, Abul-Gheit said.

Egypt seeks to reach a ceasefire between the Palestinians and the Israelis through contacts with the US side, he said.

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana is expected in Cairo and will discuss the situation, he said, adding that active contacts are being made with the Israeli side to ask them to stop using excessive force.

Egypt is exerting efforts with the Palestinian side as well as to refrain from carrying out operations that harm the peace process in general, he said.

Egypt denounces the haphazard and blind shelling of civilians, he said. "Such operations should stop because the killing of civilians is not the way by which a problem could be solved," he added.

The United States understands the suffering of the Palestinian people and the human losses, Rice said, referring to the events of last week. Innocent people should not die and Washington is concerned over the humanitarian situation in general, she said.

The U.S. along with the other parties seeks to improve the humanitarian situation, have relief aid reach the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and stop military operations against them, she added.

There are parties that resist the continuation of negotiations and are carrying out acts of violence, while the United States wants to see a Palestinian state established. Hamas does not want that, she said.

Answering a question whether the sail of US destroyer USS Cole towards the Lebanese coasts would complicate the situation in Lebanon, Rice said the United State is only after one thing; the right of the Lebanese people to practice their constitutional right in electing a president.

As for the U.S. military presence in the area, Rice said the United States has been having a strong military presence in the area since a very long time. This, she noted, demonstrates the fact that Washington is capable of protecting its interests and those of its allies.

As for the coming Arab summit, Abul Gheit said the coming summit will be held as scheduled this month.

Answering a question on whether he had any idea from Washington that the United States was supporting an Egyptian proposal on a ceasefire in Gaza, Abul Gheit said the two sides have agreed on the necessity that operations should stop and missile firing against Israel should also come to an end.

He called for an end to Israeli hostilities in the Palestinian territories. He condemned Israel's excessive use of force in its military operations in Gaza.

Rice expressed hope that a state of Palestine would be established through a Palestinian-Israeli agreement. This, she added, will help unify the Palestinians.

The U.S., said Rice, has been clear in its support of international efforts to boost the security capabilities of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rice accused Iran of supplying Hamas with arms warning that this would not help promote the security capabilities of the PNA.

In Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that "peace and negotiations are our strategic choice" but fell short of announcing a resumption of peace talks that his government cut off after an upsurge in fighting between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice exhorted Israel to "spare innocent life," though she said it has a right to defend itself against Hamas rockets.

"I call on the Israeli government to halt its aggression so the necessary environment can be created to make negotiations succeed, for us and for them, to reach the shores of peace in 2008," Abbas said. He was referring to the goal - stated at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference in November - of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty by the end of the year.

Abbas made his comments in a joint news conference with Rice, who also was holding talks with Israeli leaders.

Rice said that Israel must have the right to defend itself, but added that she will make the case to Israelis that they should make "a very strong effort to spare innocent life" in Gaza.

"Negotiations are going to have to be able to withstand the efforts of rejectionists to upset them, to create chaos and violence, so that people react by deciding not to negotiate," Rice said in Egypt at the start of two days of efforts to rescue negotiations. "That's the game of those who don't want to see a Palestinian state established."

"Unfortunately, so many innocent people are caught up in the violence," she said. "And one of the reactions of the violence is to close in and to decide not to talk. But I think what President Abbas said to Secretary Rice was that he is willing to try to reach out again, but that Israel has to meet him halfway."

"The rocket attacks against innocent Israelis in their cities need to stop. This can't go on. No Israeli government can tolerate that," she said. But the Israelis "need to be aware of the effects of these operations on innocent people."

She said Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip, last July, is armed "in part" by Iran and underlined the need for the United States and the West to train and develop the Palestinian security forces loyal to Abbas, whose government controls the West Bank.

"Hamas gets armed by the Iranians and if nobody helps to improve the security capabilities of the legitimate Palestinian Authority security forces. That's not a very good situation," she said at a news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.

Rice said she still thinks the two sides can reach a deal for Palestinian statehood this year.

"I do think that negotiations ought to resume as soon as possible," Rice told reporters on her way to the Middle East. "I understand that the situation has been complicated. But the longer the negotiations are not ongoing or the longer that they are suspended, if that's what one wants to call it, the more it is a victory for those who don't want to see a two-state solution."

Rice declined to call for a cease-fire, which many Israelis think would legitimize Hamas and its hold in Gaza. The Mediterranean coastal strip is the smaller, poorer of two Arab tracts that would form an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In Tel Aviv, Rice secured a promise from Israel and the Palestinians to resume talks despite discord over Israel's continuing military strikes in Gaza that have killed 125 Palestinians.

"I've been informed by the parties that they intend to resume the negotiations," Rice said at the end of a two-day trip aimed at mending peace efforts hobbled by the deadly Israeli blitz on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Speaking to journalists after meeting her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, she did not give a date for the resumption of talks, but said the two sides "are in contact with each other how to bring this about."

The secretary of state never mentioned the words 'truce' or 'ceasefire', which would imply negotiations with radical Islamist movement Hamas, but Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas implied as much when he said Rice was involved in the efforts to achieve a truce, along with Egypt, which has often played the role of mediator in the Middle East.

"I spoke again with Secretary of State Rice and she will send an envoy, David Welch, to Cairo where intense efforts are being deployed with a view to reaching a truce," the US-backed Abbas said.

He confirmed he intended to resume the talks he froze over the weekend to protest the attacks on Gaza. Israel has been insisting the talks carry on despite the strikes.

"The president affirms that he has the intention to restart the peace process and the negotiations to lead to the end of the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state," Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

He went on: "President Abbas appreciates the efforts made by Secretary Rice to preserve the peace process and the negotiations, notably to bring about a reciprocal truce with the help of Egypt."

The United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist movement and has sought for two years to isolate it totally, had up to then rejected Abbas's calls for a start to talks with the Islamist group.

Earlier in the day, Abbas had said a ceasefire was a condition for the resumption of the negotiations, but Rice insisted the two were not tied. Abbas has had no real power in Gaza since June, when Hamas fighters drove his forces from the territory in a week of bloody street battles.

Israel made it clear it would only stop its military strikes if it were no longer targeted by near-daily rocket attacks from militants in Gaza, a tiny, isolated, and impoverished enclave that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians.

"If there is no Qassam fire on Israel, there will be no Israeli attacks on Gaza," said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "We do not get up in the morning and think how to attack Gaza. We want to prevent fire on Israeli civilians."

Militants fired 11 rockets at southern Israel, the Israeli army said, adding that seven of them exploded inside the country but that they had caused no casualties.

The Israeli defence ministry said Barak had met with top government and military legal experts to review options on responding to attacks from Gaza.

It quoted sources in his office as saying he was seeking to learn whether international law would allow him to give advance warning to residents in Gaza areas to evacuate so that the army would have a free hand to carry out reprisal attacks while keeping the risks of endangering civilians to a minimum.

Hamas has rejected Abbas's appeals for a ceasefire and blamed Israel for the recent flare-up of violence.

"We are in a state of self-defence. When the siege and all forms of aggression come to a stop then we will see," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Violence in and around Gaza escalated sharply on February 27 after an Israeli raid killed five Hamas militants and the Islamists responded with a barrage of rocket fire on Israel, killing one civilian.

Rice said she still believed it was possible to achieve George W. Bush's goal of resolving the decades-old conflict and inking a historic peace deal by the end of the US president's term in less than a year.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas halted talks after Israel's military began an offensive against Gaza militants firing longer-range and more lethal rockets at Israeli towns. As many as 125 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed in the clashes. Two of the Palestinians died in an air strike by Israel's forces, which halted ground operations.

Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators will meet on with a U.S. envoy assigned to follow up both sides' commitments to the Roadmap peace plan, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

When General William Fraser arrives in the region, a three-way meeting, comprising the U.S., Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), will be held to discuss what had been implemented out of the U.S.-backed peace plan, Erekat said.

The Roadmap plan calls on Israel to stop settlement activities in the West Bank and military escalation and withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief of the Human Rights Commission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Dr. Zaid bin Abdulmohsen Al Hussein, who is also leader of Saudi delegation to the International Human Rights Council's 7th session, called on the world community, peace-sponsoring countries and the quartet to work for immediate stoppage of the Israeli military machine which expresses its flagrant aggression in complete negligence of the international norms, law and human feelings.

Addressing the meeting in Geneva, Dr. Al Hussein gave an account on the achievements of the Saudi Human Rights commission over the last two years.

He lashed out at Israeli military which indiscriminately attacks the innocents in Palestine and Gaza strip in particular.

He underlined the meanings of liberty, justice and tolerance in Islam.

The Arab League Council at a foreign ministerial meeting declared opposition of Arab states to Israel's nomination for West Europe seat in the United Nations Security Council.

Given its continued violations of the UN Charter and disqualification for the membership prerequisites, the Arab League council will reject Israel's nomination for the Security Council, a resolution by the council said.

The council underlined co-ordination of the Arab stances with other geographical, political and regional blocs to obstruct the Israeli nomination.