No Timetable for Rice's Return to Mideast

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she will return to the Middle East to work with others on trying to bring an end to the Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, but did not say when.

"I do think it is important that groundwork be laid so I can make the most of whatever time I can spend there," Rice told a news conference here, where she has been attending a conference on Asian issues.

Rice didn't provide a precise time for her return to the Middle East, where diplomats are working to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. She had been expected to return to the region this weekend.

"Let me be very clear. I am going to return to the Middle East. The question is when is it right for me to return," Rice said.

Rice's spokesman, Adam Ereli, took strong issue with an assertion by Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who said the failure of world leaders to call for an immediate cease-fire at a summit in Rome gave Israel a green light to carry on with its campaign to crush Hezbollah.

"Any such statement is outrageous," Ereli said. "The United States is sparing no effort to bring a durable and lasting end to this conflict."

The United States, adopting a diplomatic stance that has not been embraced by allies, has been insisting that any cease-fire to the violence over the last three weeks must come with conditions to address long-standing regional disputes. That, she has said, will ensure a durable solution.

Nearly every U.S. ally has called for a quick truce to end the bloodshed and efforts to smooth needed humanitarian supplies to the Lebanese. They believe the difficult work solving of old grievances between Hezbollah and Israel can come later.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the administration would "push back" against criticism of the United States.

Rice has spent three days dashing to high-stakes meetings in Beirut, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Rome, and then traveled to Malaysia on Thursday for the long-planned conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Her comments did not make clear if she was returning to the region this weekend, while she is her current trip, although it is clearly the hope of her diplomatic entourage.

At her news conference Friday, Rice said that before returning to the region, she wanted to confer with Elliot Abrams and David Welch, her U.S. envoys who arrived in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon. Because of the time zone disparity, she said, they were just beginning their day's work.

Rice got an exceptional - but not unusual - welcome during her stop in Israel this week. But she has faced a series of difficult sessions with world leaders elsewhere who take exception with the course the U.S. is charting in the conflict on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Sitting beside Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar at the news conference, Rice said, "I recognize the tremendous concern that the Malaysian government and other governments here have about the unfolding situation in the Middle East."

"We all are concerned about the humanitarian situation there and want to see as early an end to the conflict as possible," she added. "Whole generations have grown up there without the prospect for peace."

Asked what she hoped to accomplish when she does return to the region, Rice said, "We hope to achieve an early end to this violence, that's what we hope to achieve."

"That means that we have to help the parties establish conditions that will make it possible for an early cease-fire that, nonetheless, does not return us to the status quo."

She said the terms and conditions of a such a cease-fire would involve "a multinational force under U.N. supervision" that would have a mandate to enforce a peace agreement.

"So, many of the elements are there" for such an arrangement, Rice added. "There is no doubt in my mind that we want to achieve this and achieve it as soon as possible."

As the death toll and devastation rise, world attention has increasingly focused on the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri weighed in Thursday, calling for Muslims to unite in a holy war against Israel and to join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

Asked by reporters traveling with Rice about why she delayed her trip to the Middle East, her spokesman noted that diplomacy is an evolving process. "It is not something that is set in stone from the beginning and follows a prewritten script," Ereli said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, en route to Washington to meet Friday with Bush, said he will seek a U.N. resolution to resolve the crisis by early next week, his spokesman told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, "Everybody wants a cease-fire, everybody. We want the cease-fire to be durable and to be as soon as possible."

Crucial to any agreement, he said, is a legal package from the U.N. Security Council that would potentially deploy an international force to help the Lebanese government secure its entire territory.