US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel here focused on hopes for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Rice said on Wednesday that the international quartet for Middle East peace would meet in Washington next month, in line with German calls to seize a rare opportunity to push the process forward again amid promising signs in the region.
"This is a very critical time for the international community," Rice said.
Rice and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters after talks in Berlin that representatives from the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union would meet in Washington "probably February 1 or 2."
Germany, in its capacity as the current EU president, has made revitalizing the quartet one of its priorities. It held its last full meeting in September.
"We are both of the opinion that the time is ripe for a meeting of the quartet," Steinmeier said.
Rice said she hoped the international partners would help both sides to make progress on the roadmap, the peace plan that the quartet drew up in 2003 with the aim of establishing a viable Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.
The roadmap has been stalled since the radical Hamas movement won Palestinian elections last year.
"It has the backing of Israelis and Palestinians, but it also has the backing of the entire international system," Rice said.
"I would expect that as we try to accelerate progress on the roadmap, the quartet would try and lend assistance to the parties as they try to do it."
Steinmeier said he believed the roadmap remained the best chance of success.
Rice came to Germany from Kuwait after completing a six-country tour of the Middle East during which she announced she would hold a three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas within a month.
She said in Berlin it would take "a few weeks" to organise the three-way summit.
"I think it will be useful to have the meeting with the quartet in advance of that," Rice said.
In Berlin, Rice also met Christopher Hill, the top US envoy to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, who is holding discussions with the North's negotiator Kim Kye-gwan in the German capital.
She said she hoped the six-way negotiations would resume soon and that Hill's talks in Germany would pave the way for "a more favourable atmosphere" in the full discussions.
Rice was also expected to brief Merkel on Iran's nuclear ambitions, although on Wednesday she bluntly reiterated the US administration's refusal to engage in bilateral talks with Tehran until it stops enriching uranium.
"This is not the time to break a longstanding American policy of not engaging with the Iranians bilaterally," she said. "It's just not the time."
Germany, which with EU partners Britain and France spearheaded negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme, has urged Washington to open a dialogue with the Islamic republic.
France has recently considered sending an envoy to Iran to discuss the situation in Lebanon.
