JERUSALEM, March 5: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to resume peace talks suspended over an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, but she did not specify a date.

Signalling a willingness by Israel to hold fire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there would not be further attacks on Hamas-ruled Gaza if Palestinian militants stop rocket salvoes.

Rice dispatched a top envoy to Cairo, a key player in trying to broker any calm between the Jewish state and Islamist Hamas.

Hamas’s rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said earlier peace negotiations could not get under way again until Israel reached a truce with militants in Gaza, which has been under an ever-tightening blockade designed to pressure Hamas.

Abbas’s comments touched off a flurry of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Rice with the Palestinians. After speaking to Abbas by telephone, she told a news conference a truce was not a condition for restarting the talks on Palestinian statehood.

“I’ve been informed by the parties that they intend to resume the negotiations and that they are in contact with one another as to how to bring this about,” Rice said at a news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Rice, ending a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, did not say when the next round of talks would be held.

The United States hopes talks could result in an agreement before US President George Bush leaves office in January.

Abbas had frozen talks with Israel on Sunday in protest at an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip in which more than 120 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed. Medical workers said about half of the Palestinian dead were civilians. Israel ended the five-day sweep on Monday but threatened to send troops back into the territory, which Hamas seized from Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in June, if rocket fire continued.

But Olmert told reporters on Wednesday after meeting Rice: “One thing should be clear: If there is no Qassam (rocket) fire on Israel, there will be no Israeli attack on Gaza. We do not rise in the morning and think about how to attack Gaza.”

HAMAS COOL ON OVERTURE: Hamas responded to the overture with scepticism.

“We want deeds, and not words. There must be a total cessation of all forms of Israeli aggression on our people, in addition to a reopening of all crossings,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said, referring to an Israeli-led blockade on Gaza, many of whose 1.5 million Palestinians are aid-dependent.

But Abu Zuhri did not immediately repeat past Hamas demands that any truce include the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians want to found a state and where Israeli forces regularly mount raids.

Abbas’s office issued a statement after he spoke to Rice that did not repeat his condition for talks. It said Rice was exerting efforts to “enforce a mutual calm” and Abbas’s intention was to “resume the peace process and negotiations”.

Rice said a special US-Israeli-Palestinian committee would meet next week to examine to what extent the sides were meeting their commitments under a long-stalled peace “road map”.

The Palestinians had sought such a meeting to put pressure on Israel to meet its obligation to freeze settlement activity.

The road map calls on Palestinians to rein in militants.

At her news conference, Rice said she was sending David Welch, the US assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, to Cairo, which European Union officials see as key to brokering a ceasefire and the reopening of Gaza’s border with Egypt.—Reuters