Rice and Olmert agree Syria can attend peace summit

       On her third visit to the region in the last six weeks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lunched with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday to discuss the upcoming Mideast peace conference expected in the last week of the month in Annapolis, Maryland. The two agreed that Israel and the United States would allow Syrian officials to attend if Syria accepted the fact that the summit would deal only with Israeli-Palestinian relations, and not with the fate of the Golan Heights.Rice also met with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who told her that Israel's security must be assured before a Palestinian state can be created.
Livni and Rice met Sunday morning in Jerusalem for talks aimed at overcoming the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians ahead of the U.S.-sponsored regional summit. At the start of their meeting, Livni said that negotiations with Palestinians ahead of the peace summit have stalled. "There is no tension, but there are problems," Livni said. "There are differences of opinion over the road map. We must reach a basic understanding that the creation of a Palestinian state should occur only after Israel's security is established." (19,16)