WASHINGTON: The United States on Monday said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would head for the Middle East, on what one analyst termed a mission impossible.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed Ms Rice was preparing a visit, after President George Bush, in an unguarded moment caught on a microphone at the G8 summit, said she would go ‘soon’.

Mr McCormack did not set a date for Ms Rice’s departure, but said she wanted first to hear from a United Nations crisis mission expected to report back to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan later this week.

“Her goal would be to further the diplomacy that would lay the groundwork for a lasting cessation of violence,” he said, offering a potentially modest aim of such a mission.

State Department sources said Ms Rice was pondering whether to add a Middle East swing ahead of an already planned departure for Asia next week.

Though Ms Rice’s presence would kick diplomatic efforts into higher gear, it remained uncertain how she could immediately ease the deepening crisis.

“Obviously, I’m looking every day at what I can do, and I’ll do whatever it takes,” Ms Rice told ABC from Russia on Sunday.

But she recognised the stakes would be high in any return to the days when US secretaries of state zipped across the region brokering ceasefires.—AFP