JERICHO, WEST BANK — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday that his struggle to replace the Hamas-led government with a more moderate coalition had reached a "dead end," complicating the goal of renewed peace talks with Israel.
Visibly upset, Abbas delivered the news during Rice's visit to the West Bank and Israel, a trip aimed at encouraging dialogue between the two sides and building on the momentum of their 4-day-old cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
With Arab allies prodding the Bush administration to intervene in the conflict, Rice's meetings with Abbas here and with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem produced no immediate breakthrough.
"Hopefully, we can take this moment to accelerate our efforts and intensify our efforts toward the two-state solution that we all desire," Rice said, standing beside Abbas at a news conference and endorsing his goal of an independent Palestinian state.
Rice praised both leaders, calling Abbas' initiative to bring about the truce extraordinary. Later, she lauded Olmert's offer of peace talks and his restraint in response to scattered Palestinian cease-fire violations.
The truce is "quite fragile," Rice said, "but we would like to see it consolidated and then extended" to the West Bank.
Rice met separately with the two leaders after Olmert, according to Israeli newspapers, rejected a proposed joint meeting with Abbas and President Bush, who is visiting Jordan.
In a speech Monday, Olmert offered to open negotiations with Abbas, but only if Hamas freed a captured Israeli soldier and gave way to a new Palestinian government that recognized Israel and renounced violence.
Abbas' announcement of a deadlock over the government came as an Egyptian mediator reported progress toward a deal to exchange the soldier for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Abbas, the Fatah Party leader, retained the presidency after Hamas came to power in elections this year.
For months he has been pressing the militant Islamic movement to step aside in favor of a broadly representative unity government made up mostly of nonpartisan technocrats acceptable to the West, which has cut off aid to the Hamas-led government.
Until this week, Abbas had sounded hopeful of pulling off such a move, which he expected would prompt the United States and European countries to drop the economic sanctions that have left the Palestinian Authority unable to pay its 165,000 employees.
