Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations

    WASHINGTON, March 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush has invited Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to the White House around May 1 for talks to promote the Middle East peace process, a U.S. official said Thursday.

    The scheduled talks are part of a continuing effort "to work with the Palestinians and the Israelis as well as other countries in the region in realizing a Palestinian state living side by sidein peace and security with Israel," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

    Details of the meeting are being worked out, he added.

    Prior to the announcement, the State Department said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to return to Israel and the Palestinian territories later this week in a renewed bid to spur peace negotiations between the two sides.

    Rice visited Israel and the Palestinian territories some three weeks ago to salvage the peace talks after the Palestinian side suspended them in the wake of a deadly Israeli assault in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

    The peace talks, officially revived late last November at a U.S.-sponsored international conference after a seven-year freeze, have made little progress since.

    U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who visited the Middle East last week, said Sunday that the U.S. will do its utmost to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.