Rice emerges as key in Gaza-border pact

JERUSALEM — Since Condoleezza Rice took over as America's top diplomat in January, she has tended to use her influence more behind the scenes than in front of the cameras.

The secretary of state has presided quietly over important shifts in U.S. foreign policy — such as deciding to work with European allies to try to end Iran's sensitive nuclear activities, and moving Washington, D.C., closer to its four negotiating partners in talks to coax North Korea to give up atomic weapons.

But over the past two days, she stepped into the limelight and put her credibility on the line to broker Tuesday's agreement between Israelis and Palestinians on opening a major border crossing to the Gaza Strip and ending the territory's isolation.

In Middle East politics, seemingly rock-solid deals often unravel before the ink is dry. But if Tuesday's accord holds, it will be as much a victory for Rice as for the Palestinians and Israelis.

After a day of talks Monday, including meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Rice upped the ante early in the evening by declaring her intent to forgo the first day of a gathering of Pacific Rim leaders and foreign ministers in South Korea scheduled to start Tuesday. Instead, she told her staff members, she would stay in the Mideast until there was a deal.

The decision, made Monday afternoon less than an hour before her scheduled departure for Asia, was a calculated gamble for Rice. But it added pressure on the Israelis and the Palestinians, and in the end, proved crucial.

"To push it over the edge, one needs not envoys but secretaries of state," said James Wolfensohn, the international special envoy for Gaza's economic development.

According to Rice's aides, it was a Wolfensohn memorandum that she received as she arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday and read as her motorcade made its way up the long and windy road to Jerusalem that persuaded her to become directly and intensely involved. According to one U.S. official who saw the document, it set out the nature of the sticking points and made a concise case for an urgent solution.

Wolfensohn, the flamboyant former World Bank president who came to the region last spring with a mandate to help the Palestinians rebuild Gaza's shattered economy and connect it with the outside world, had achieved virtually none of the goals he had set since his arrival.

His frustration surfaced as Gaza began to sink into just what he had been sent to prevent: a large virtual prison with its seaport and borders closed, its airport in shambles and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to open the entry points meandering.

When she traveled Monday morning to meet Abbas in the West Bank, Finance Minister Salam Fayyad presented her with a bag of Gazan-grown green bell peppers — a sample of what Gazan farms couldn't export, he explained.

Her meetings with Sharon and Abbas convinced her that both wanted a deal, aides said. With Sharon's tenuous governing coalition on the verge of fracture and Abbas facing parliamentary elections in January, those aides said she understood the window of opportunity for a deal could close quickly.

By Monday evening, she had worked up the rough draft of an agreement on a laptop computer in her hotel room. At first, only Palestinian negotiators, including civil-affairs minister Mohammad Dalan, were in the room; the Israelis stayed in close phone contact. As the night wore on, the Israelis eventually came to the hotel. Wolfensohn joined the talks as informal side meetings in hallways and adjoining rooms dealt with details.

As midnight came and went, the negotiations continued and as dawn broke, the deal was nearly done. When the Palestinians agreed on the final minor point shortly after 10 a.m. and someone suggested celebrating, an aide said Rice replied, "Yeah, we should celebrate by sleeping."