Rice: There is Intersection Between Syrian-Israeli Talks, Palestinian Issue, Shebaa Farms
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said nascent indirect Turkish-brokered talks between Israel and Syria and a new push to deal with the Shebaa Farms area should not be allowed to distract from Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
En route to a conference in Berlin on Palestinian security, legal and penal reform, Rice allowed that there was an "intersection" between the three tracks. But she warned against compromising the Israeli-Palestinian effort with too much attention to the other two.
The Palestinian-Israeli issue is "intersecting now with the efforts on the Israeli-Syrian track and intersecting with the need for…the United Nations Secretary General to complete his work on 1701 and the Lebanese track," she said Monday.
"I”m sure we”ll have a chance to discuss the intersection, but I hope we will not lose track, or not lose focus, on the Palestinian-Israeli piece, which is, of course, still the one that is most advanced," Rice added.
"We”ll review where we are on all these tracks," the top U.S. diplomat said. She was scheduled to meet Tuesday on the sidelines of the conference with the other members of the international diplomatic "quartet" on the Middle East, the U.N., European Union and Russia.