During her visit in Middle East, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has visited today Egypt, where she held talks with Egypt's President Hosny Mubarak. Rice met Mubarak as part of efforts to garner support for the US-hosted peace summit between Israel

and Palestina.

Speaking in Ramallah after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Monday, Rice said Israel and the Palestinians were making their most serious effort "in many years" to end their mutual conflict.
But, she admitted, the sides still had "a lot to work on."

Cairo wants the conference to be postponed until conditions are more suitable to avoid a failure that could seriously damage the prospects of peace in the Middle East, Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmad Abul-Ghait said on Monday.

But after his meeting with Rice, Ahmad Abul-Ghait expressed his support for American intentions for the conference. Rice “has helped us to understand the American objective. She shed a great deal of light on the current American efforts,'' he said.

Abul-Ghait reiterated Arab demands for the upcoming conference to set a timetable for negotiations on the core issues. He warned against open-ended negotiations.

"We do not seek a rigid timetable, but one of six months or a year for talks to take place within," he said.

After the talks in Cairo, Condoleezza Rice said that the date for the Middle East peace conference will be set when the parties involved agree on a joint document addressing the Core issues: borders, the Palestinian refugee problem and Jerusalem. These issues are all potential deal-breakers, and the last serious attempt to forge an Israeli-Palestinian settlement - at Camp David in the summer of 2000 - foundered when the sides were unable to agree to a compromise on them.

The US has not set a date for the conference, so it cannot be postponed before even a date is set - but US President George Bush said it would be held this fall, Rice added.