Riyadh: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received cautious Saudi support Tuesday for Washington s new plan to quell violence in Iraq, as she tried to rally Arab backing for the last-ditch strategy.

"We agree with the objectives" of the US plan to bring peace to the war-torn country, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at a joint press conference with Rice in Riyadh.

But he was cautious about the means of reaching the objective.

"We cannot comment on the means that will be applied .We re hoping that these objectives will be implemented, but the means are not in our hands. They are in the hands of the Iraqis," he said.
 

Rice praised Saudi Arabia s role in urging national reconciliation in Iraq, and a greater Arab engagement in efforts to reunify the Iraqis.

"If the Arab League is prepared to go forward with a reconciliation conference, that will also be very useful to the Iraqis," said Rice, who was due to meet Arab foreign ministers in Kuwait City later Tuesday.

"I do know that the possibility of reinforcing Iraq s place in the Arab world through an Arab initiative would be a very useful matter," she added.

The secretary of state has turned her attention to Iraq and Gulf region after focusing on reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the first part of her regional tour that began at the weekend.

Rice, who left later to Kuwait, was to hold talks with Kuwaiti leaders and confer with other foreign ministers of the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states plus Egypt and Jordan.

She was aiming to drum up support for US President George W. Bush s 'surge' strategy to tackle violence in Iraq with the deployment of an additional 21,500 troops.

The plan revealed last week has come under fire in many Arab capitals, even among staunch allies in the Gulf, with critics saying it provides a recipe for more sectarian violence in Iraq that could spread elsewhere in the region.

But Rice on Monday won support from Cairo after meeting with President Hosni Mubarak in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.

"We are supportive of the plan w e are hopeful that plan will lead to the stabilisation of, unity and cohesion of the Iraqi Government," said Egypt s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.

While Rice began her trip stressing she had no plan for reviving the Middle East peace process, she announced a three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The summit, expected to take place in three or four weeks, will be the first meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in two years.

Stressing the meeting would only be a prelude to the resumption of final settlement negotiations, Rice said "There are a number of issues, some old, some new, that will have to be resolved if there is to be a Palestinian state."

"I am very clear about one thing we do not want to do, which is to rush the formal negotiations before things are fully prepared, before people are fully prepared," she said.

Olmert welcomed the summit but stressed that any Palestinian government involved in peace talks should recognise Israel s right to exist.

For his part, Abbas said he rejects 'any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders, because we do not believe it to be a realistic choice that can be built upon'.

Abul Gheit said the Palestinian political crisis needed to be contained and contacts resumed between Israel and the Palestinians, in what he described as a stabilisation phase.

"Then you will start the second phase whereby everything is discussed in relation to the establishment of this Palestinian state," he added.

During a lightning visit to Jordan late Sunday, King Abdullah II told Rice that concrete progress needed to be made on the stalled Middle East roadmap peace blueprint if the region was to be spared fresh bloodshed.