TEL AVIV (AFP)---US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted Monday that the Israelis and Palestinians have a "lot of work ahead" if they are to strike a peace deal by year-end.
"We continue to have the same goal which is to reach agreement by the end of the year," Rice said on her seventh visit to the region since she helped launch a new peace process last November.
"We have a lot of work ahead to do that, and obviously it's a complicated time, but it's always complicated out here," the top US diplomat told reporters on the plane from Washington to Tel Aviv.
The two sides formally relaunched the peace process after a seven-year hiatus at a US-hosted conference in November, with the goal of signing a full peace deal by the time President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009. But they have made little tangible progress.
The process has been marred by the seizure of the Gaza Strip by the Islamist Hamas movement in June 2007 and Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.
But in a goodwill gesture to US-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Israel released 198 Palestinian prisoners just hours before Rice landed in Tel Aviv.
"The release of this group fills us with joy but we will not be satisfied until all prisoners are released, the 11,000 who are still waiting," Abbas said at an outdoor celebration in the West Bank political capital Ramallah, referring to Palestinians still in Israeli jails.
Rice hailed the releases as "a very good step.
Rice was last in Israel in mid-June, when she strongly criticised the expansion of the Jewish settlements, saying they undermined the peace process.
The latest visit is Rice's first to the region since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on July 30 that he will be resigning from his post to battle corruption allegations after his centrist Kadima party chooses a new leader in September.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been leading Israel's negotiating team with the Palestinians, is a front-runner to replace him, as is Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief of staff.
But Livni on Thursday played down the likelihood of meeting the goal set at November's peace conference of getting a deal this year.
She warned that "premature" efforts to bridge the gaps between the two sides could lead to "clashes."
Rice sought to dispel any notion pressure was being brought to bear.
"It's extremely important to just keep making forward progress rather than prematurely to come to some set of conclusions," Rice said.
"I don't think anyone has been trying to bring pressure to bridge the gaps.
What we have been trying to do is to help the parties see how their own conversations might converge," Rice said when asked to comment on Israeli warnings.
Rice also pointed to positive trends, including a "very fragile" truce in the Gaza Strip brokered by Egypt as well as Israel's moves to lift roadblocks in the West Bank, but she said both sides had to do more.
On her first of two days of talks, Rice was due to hold separate meetings with Livni, top Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qorei and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
