ASWAN (Egypt), March 24: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Middle East allies on Saturday to reinvigorate a long-dormant Arab plan for peace with Israel that she hopes may hold the key to keeping alive fractured Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

On the first leg of her fourth visit to the region in as many months, Rice met in a hotel on the Nile in this historic southern Egyptian city with foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The so-called Arab Quartet of states is a central element in US plans for stabilising Iraq and helping mediate in an Israeli-Palestinian landscape complicated by a power-struggle between the Western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, and the radical Islamic movement, Hamas.

Rice travels on Sunday to Jerusalem and the West Bank for her first round of shuttling between Palestinian and Israeli leaders since Abbas’ secular Fatah party joined a national unity government dominated by Hamas, which Israel, the US and Europe consider a terrorist group.

Rice said her discussions with the Arab officials would focus on US desires to see an Arab summit in Riyadh next week formally endorse a renewal of a five-year-old Arab initiative for a peace deal with Israel.

The plan offers recognition of the Jewish state if it returns to its 1967 borders, permits the creation of an independent Palestinian state and allows the return of Palestinian refugees.—AFP