US/MIDDLE EAST: President Bush spoke to Mr Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Prime Minister, for the first time yesterday and expressed his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, Mr Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, indicated that Mr Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, would have to make progress in imposing security both as a precondition for action on the Israeli side and before he could be given an invitation to Washington.
Mr Bush was looking forward to meeting Mr Abbas at some point, Mr Fleischer said. "But first, security has got to come on the ground. From that can come the advance that both parties need.
"The president reiterated his vision . . . for two states living side by side in peace and the president reiterated the absolute need for all parties to fight terror," Mr Fleischer added.
Mr Bush also telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon and urged him to stay the course on the peace process despite a recent spate of suicide bombings, Mr Fleischer said.
Sources close to the Bush administration said that in the wake of suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco last week, the White House was not in a position to put pressure on the Israeli government to make significant concessions.
One source said the spate of violence by Palestinian militants would put the process on hold for several weeks - at least until Mr Sharon rescheduled his visit to the White House that had been due to take place yesterday.
The wave of suicide attacks in recent days has further undermined the already shaky prospects for the "road map" towards Palestinian statehood by 2005.
While the Palestinians have accepted the plan, Israel has refused to endorse it. Many members of Mr Sharon's Likud party, as well as rightwing parties in the governing coalition, oppose the road map and the creation of a Palestinian state, while some openly advocate the "transfer" of Palestinians to Jordan.
Many Palestinians believe that only under substantial US pressure would Mr Sharon adopt the road map, including its calls for security co-operation and an easing of the humanitarian situation in the occupied territories.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army pulled out of Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza town it swept into last Thursday in what it described as an open-ended operation to prevent militants firing homemade rockets into southern Israel.
Before leaving, Israeli forces destroyed 10 houses- four belonging to families of Islamic militants - tore up roads, severed telephone lines and uprooted thousands of trees they suspected were used for cover in launching homemade rockets.
As its soldiers pulled out, the army distributed leaflets warning: "The Israeli Defence Forces will continue to operate in Beit Hanoun and anywhere in the Gaza Strip against terrorists who turned your houses and fields into launching areas for firing Qassam rockets against innocent people," the leaflets said.