Word: rice
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When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah Monday morning, Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad knew it was her 51st birthday. He said he had a present that wouldn't exceed the government gift limit. He reached into a brown paper supermarket bag and pulled out a shiny green bell pepper...
...weeks earlier, Rice had been warned by James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank chief sent by the U.S. and its allies as a special envoy to help reboot the Palestinian economy, that Gaza's harvest, which was almost due, would be likely to rot in warehouses. That was because Israel, which controls all access points into the Palestinian territories even after withdrawing from Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority had been unable to reach an agreement that would let inhabitants of the territories travel and trade. The two sides were inches from a deal, Wolfensohn said, but were hung...
...need to try to close it," Wolfensohn had urged Rice. "If you're the Secretary of State of the United States, I would have to say there's a little more clout associated with that. And therefore, to push it over the edge one needs not envoys but Secretaries of State...
...Rice agreed. The Secretary of State, a diehard Cleveland Browns fan, put it this way: "Sometimes the last yard is the hardest." Also, she said, details weren't trivial: It wasn't unreasonable for Israelis to be obsessed with security, nor for Palestinians to be equally prickly about sovereignty and independence...
...Monday, Rice met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as well as with other senior officials, and also with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, pressing both sides to find the "will and creativity" to open not only Rafah but all the gateways in and out of Gaza and the West Bank...