RAMALLAH, West Bank - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised on Sunday a bigger American push toward a Palestinian state in a bid to bolster moderate President Mahmoud Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (L) meets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah January 14, 2007. [Reuters]

"I have heard loud and clear the call for deeper American engagement ... You will have my commitment to do precisely that," Rice said with Abbas at her side in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Rice has offered no details about US plans to revive stalled peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians. She held talks with Jordan's King Abdullah in Amman later in the day and meets Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday.

Israeli officials said Washington was exploring several options including the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, an idea proposed in a US-backed peace plan known as the "road map" but repeatedly rejected by Abbas.

"I have stressed to the secretary of state our rejection of temporary solutions, including provisional borders for our state," Abbas said on Sunday. Palestinians fear such temporary frontiers would become final, leaving them a truncated state.

Rice, who has avoided the high-speed diplomacy of some previous US administrations, is trying to strengthen Abbas in his showdown with the governing Hamas group, which won elections a year ago and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction.

In Amman, a palace statement quoted King Abdullah as telling Rice: "The passage of time without achieving tangible and real progress based on specific steps to activate the road map in the near future will only lead to widening the cycle of violence."

Rice said she would focus on accelerating the three-stage road map in order to "show to the Palestinian people how we might move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Abbas told Rice he would make one last effort to form a unity government with Hamas but was determined to hold a new election if those talks failed, a Palestinian official said.

Washington hopes Palestinians will rally around the moderate president if he can demonstrate progress toward statehood. It is also seeking to strengthen Abbas militarily by pouring $86 million into helping train and equip his presidential guard.

Hamas receives aid from Iran and other Islamist allies, and is building up its own "executive force."

Rice, on her eighth trip to the region in her two years as secretary of state, did not directly address Palestinian objections to a state with provisional borders, part of the second stage of the road map.

Under the plan's first stage, Israel was supposed to halt settlement building in the occupied West Bank and the Palestinians were required to dismantle militant groups.

Abbas told Rice he was "ready for end-game negotiations" over the final borders of a Palestinian state, top Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said.

"I've heard how he (Abbas) sees the 'road map' and to get to that end state. So I think it's not a bad thing to listen. But ... it's also important to act and we'll look for ways to act," Rice told reporters.

European and Arab allies have long pressed Washington to get more involved in the peace process which collapsed in 2000.

Critics say Washington is responding now because it needs help in containing Iraq's violence and Iran's nuclear programme.

Rice is seeking Arab help to bolster Abbas and to stabilize Iraq during a trip that will include stops in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well as Germany and Britain.

Rice will meet the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab states in Kuwait on Tuesday to discuss Iraq, the Kuwaiti news agency quoted a Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry official as saying.