RAMALLAH: The date has not been announced but Washington is banking on a Middle East conference in Annapolis this month to kick off serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and save its own political legacy.

“Failure is simply not an option,” said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who wrapped up a two-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Monday where she sought to bridge differences between both sides ahead of the conference.

She got public commitments, but no details from both sides, to use the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, as a launch pad for Palestinian statehood negotiations, with the goal of doing this before President George Bush leaves office in January 2009.

The stakes are high and many are sceptical whether Rice can pull off what former US presidents were unable to.

The Bush administration wants to turn its legacy around from the unpopular Iraq war by getting a Palestinian statehood deal while Israeli and Palestinian leaders are weighing how much they can compromise without political fallout.

With the militant group Hamas in control of Gaza, it is unclear how President Mahmoud Abbas would impose any deal on the Palestinian side and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been weakened politically since last year’s war in Lebanon.

“There’s a bit of a gamble here, there are political risks for everybody,” said a senior State Department official, briefing reporters at the end of Rice’s trip, her eighth to the region this year.

“There is a lot at stake in particular for Israelis and Palestinians. Our US government would not fall but it is not inconceivable that there could be political shocks for Israelis and Palestinians as a result of some of the decisions they might have to make,” he added.

Olmert and Abbas told Rice they would negotiate the thorny issues, which include the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and borders of a future state, but offered no details or benchmarks.

Rice conceded the road ahead was tough but she pointed to a change in tone since she hosted a frosty three-way meeting in Jerusalem last February when it was a struggle to even get Olmert and Abbas in the same room.

REGULAR MEETING: But now both sides meet regularly and a rough blueprint of negotiations is expected to be included in a document being drawn up for the conference, which the senior official said would likely take place in the last week of this month.

“I don’t see any reason to deviate from that schedule, but you never say ‘never’ in the Middle East,” said the official.

He said invitees would include members of the quartet of Middle East mediators — the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia — as well as other major powers and Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait and US foe Syria.Rice made clear she wants full Arab participation, including Saudi Arabia which has so far been noncommittal. “One of the missing ingredients has always been (getting) the Arabs in on the ground floor,” said Rice of previous failed peace initiatives.

In the build-up to the meeting, Rice has sought advice from Democratic ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who both stressed a need for Arab involvement.

“With all due respect, I’ll try it my way because it hasn’t worked (previous negotiations). In the final analysis, something has always prevented the Israelis and the Palestinians from getting there,” she said.

Despite their optimism, US officials expect bumps in the road. For example, basic steps promised in the 2003 US ‘road map’, centring on security promises by the Palestinians and Israel stopping expansion of Jewish settlements, have not been fulfilled.

“Where you smell the flowers you look for the funeral. You’ve always got to be ready for bad news. Right now there is a pretty solid ray of hope and I think we can move this along,” said the senior State Department official.

—Reuters