JERUSALEM, May 4: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put new pressure on Israel to ease movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank on her latest visit to the region to push sluggish peace efforts.

She was expected to urge Israel to take new steps to bolster Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s authority in the territory by lifting more of the 500 plus checkpoints and roadblocks that strangle the West Bank economy.

On her last visit to the region, Rice secured an Israeli pledge to remove some 50 roadblocks, but the Palestinians and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the move was largely insignificant.

“The first thing we are going to do is review the ones that were supposedly removed,” she told reporters on the flight from London on Saturday evening.

“One thing I want to talk to the Israelis about is the qualitative character of those roadblocks, because not all roadblocks are created equal.” At the same time, she said “everybody is looking to the Palestinians to take responsibility for security. And there have to be very insistent efforts to make sure that they are not being undermined.”

Some 600 Palestinian reinforcements were deployed to the West Bank town of Jenin hours before Rice arrived as part of a security crackdown in the north of the territory aimed at building confidence with Israel.

On her 15th visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in less than two years, Rice was expected to press both sides to stick to their goal of striking a peace deal by the time US President George W. Bush leaves office in 2009.

She arrived in Ramallah for talks with Abbas after holding a three-way meeting with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad on conditions in the West Bank.

Later Rice was to host another trilateral meeting with the two sides’ chief peace negotiators, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei.

Rice arrived in Tel Aviv late on Saturday after talks with the other main sponsors of the Middle East peace process in London, and travelled straight to Jerusalem to dine with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at his residence.

Olmert has vowed to press ahead with peace talks despite the launch of a new corruption probe against him last week, the fifth such investigation since he formed his government two years ago, though one has since been dismissed.

“I promise that when things are cleared by the authorities they will be put in the right proportion, the correct context, and that will put an end to the rumours,” he said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting.

“Until then, we have a national agenda, I have an agenda as prime minister of Israel, and I intend to keep my agenda,” he said, adding that he would have breakfast with Rice and lunch with Abbas on Monday.

The peace talks have been mired by violence in Gaza and Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised state.

Rice’s visit comes amid Egyptian-led efforts to broker a truce between Israel and Gaza militants that would ease an Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory, which has been sidelined in the current peace talks.

At least one Palestinian was killed and five others were wounded, including three militants, when Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopters carried out a brief operation in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.—AFP