Rice, Olmert plan summit with Abbas

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday he would hold a three-way summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to try to revive stalled peace talks.

Olmert said the three would meet shortly but gave no date or place for the talks, the first such high-level meeting between the three parties since a 2003 summit in Jordan attended by US President George W. Bush.

Rice, who met Olmert in Jerusalem one day after separate talks with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, has promised a bigger American push toward establishing a Palestinian state but has offered no details in public.