WASHINGTON, May 7: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has put off a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories due to the domestic political woes of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a senior official said on Monday.
Rice was to have met Israeli and Palestinian leaders immediately following a trip to Moscow next week, but cancelled due to the fallout from an official Israeli report harshly criticising Olmert's handling of last year's war in Lebanon, the official said.
“It's a change in plans, yes,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said after revealing that Rice would not be stopping in Israel or the Palestinian areas on next week's trip.
“The political situation in Israel has become a bit more complex in the near term,” he said, referring to widespread calls for Olmert to resign over the report released a week ago into the government's handling of a costly 34-day war with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.
“There's, obviously, a lot of politics in Israel that they are working through at this point, but we are going to continue our efforts to advance the Israeli-Palestinian track,” he said.
A senior official said that Rice may, instead, meet in Egypt with her counterparts from Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- all parties in the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace mediators.
The Lebanon war report sparked a mass anti-government rally in Tel Aviv last week and prompted calls for Olmert's resignation, including from his deputy and foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.—AFP
