Rice, Olmert and Abbas in three-way summit

Ms Rice, on a lengthy Middle East tour, had talks yesterday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the southern town of Luxor and later left for Saudi Arabia. She has been to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she would bring Israeli and Palestinian leaders together soon for what she called informal talks on how to set up a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would take part in the meeting and the aim would be to reach a "political horizon" for the Palestinian people, Ms Rice told a news conference in Egypt.

Diplomats have used the term "political horizon" in the past to mean offering Palestinians a credible expectation they would have their own state and that Israeli occupation would end.

However, the Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, from the Islamist group Hamas that controls the Palestinian government, said Ms Rice's visit could be "the most dangerous to the Palestinian cause" and was aimed at securing Israeli interests.

"My discussions, we hope, will lead to further work on a political horizon... that would lead ultimately to the establishment of a Palestinian state," Ms Rice said.

"(Olmert and Abbas) want to start that discussion. It seems wise to begin with ... an informal discussion - to just sit and talk about the issues."

A senior US official said the meeting would be held in three to four weeks, probably in the Middle East.

Similar meetings have taken place in the six years since talks on a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal broke down in 2001 but the US official, who was travelling with Ms Rice, said this one would be different.

"They haven't sat down for six years to talk about issues as ambitious as looking at what would be necessary to get a Palestinian state... This is not just another meeting," said the official, asking not to be named.

When talks broke down in 2001, Israel was close to agreement on a Palestinian state including the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank. But a change of government in Israel after the start of a second Palestinian uprising led to a long stalemate.

Emad Gad, a specialist on Arab-Israeli relations at a Cairo think tank, said he thought the US was serious this time because it needed help from friendly Arab governments such as Egypt's for its new strategy in Iraq.