WASHINGTON, US - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaves on Monday on a new mission to the Middle East as a fresh outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas militants has placed the teetering peace process in peril.

She faces an uphill task. The White House on Sunday called for an end to violence in Gaza and for a resumption of Middle East peace talks.

'The violence needs to stop and the talks need to resume,' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters at President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas.

But early Monday, an Israeli military spokesman said the country's massive military operation in the Gaza Strip was 'winding down.'

And Israeli public radio insisted the operation, in which at least 78 Palestinians have been killed, was in fact over.

The apparent end of the incursion is timely for Rice as she is expected in Cairo Tuesday for talks with Egyptian leaders on the situation.

She is then due to visit Ramallah and Jerusalem and meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, taking the pulse of talks relaunched amid much fanfare in November at the US-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

The top US diplomat then travels to Brussels for Nato ministerial talks which are set to be dominated by Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Progress uncertainThe signs of any progress on the Mideast peace front are bleak, as earlier optimism of creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008 evaporates.

Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa recently warned the Annapolis accords were under threat of collapse, and the Palestinian government has accused Israel of trying to scupper the process by relaunching several controversial settlement projects.

'By pursuing its settlement projects Israel is shunning its responsibility to hold serious negotiations and is thus torpedoing the points agreed at Annapolis,' Mr Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told reporters.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remains skeptical.

'We have a desire to reach an agreement within the year 2008. But I am not sure we will make it,' Mr Olmert said on a visit to Tokyo.

There have been calls for Dr Rice to become personally more involved in the peace process, including one from Jordan's King Abdullah II.

'Time is running out and we need the United States of America completely involved, to influence the course of discussions, monitor progress, and help bridge the gaps to ensure a final agreement by the end of 2008,' the king said on Friday in a speech to Princeton University.

Scott Lasensky, an expert on the Middle East at the United States Institute of Peace, agrees.

'We are too absent. On the ground, we do not seem to be offering useful ideas to resolve the Gaza situation. And then, at the highest levels, in terms of diplomacy and negotiations, we are not even in the room.'

Dr Rice, who has so far been reluctant to take control of talks, preferring to leave the negotiations to the Israeli and Palestinian teams, ripostes regularly that her predecessors failed in the Middle East and she has her own methods.

Repeating past mistakes
But Mr Lasensky says she is ignoring one of the most basic lessons of the trail of broken Middle East peace accords.

'One of the most important lessons from the past negotiations is that Israelis and Palestinians cannot be left on their own because there are too many asymmetries of power. It just does not work,' he said.

In the Annapolis conference 'there were some good hopes and there were some good ideas. But they are not following through what they committed to do,' he added. -- AFP