The European Union joined Egypt, Jordan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday in suggesting that Middle East peace talks shift straight to the 'end game' by focusing on the issues at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

"What we would like to do with our friends is to know what
is the end game - once we have the end game, to know really how we can get there," Solana told a news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

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EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also said a meeting of the Quartet of Middle East mediators in February would try to find ways to ensure progress towards peace before the summer.

For the past few years, peace attempts such as the "road
map" of 2003 have concentrated on small confidence-building measures, leaving aside bigger questions such as the status of Jersualem, the borders of a Palestinian state and refugees.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week she would bring Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert together in informal talks to discuss how to set up a Palestinian state.

A senior U.S. administration official, however, has said the meeting would not forsake the road map, raising doubts about Washington's commitment to accelerating the process.

The official, who was travelling with Rice during her Middle East tour that took her to Egypt and Israel among other countries, said the meeting was likely to take place in the Middle East within three to four weeks.

Rice said the three-way summit would focus on the "political horizon" that would ultimately lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Aboul Gheit said the U.S. top diplomat would return to the
region in February.

"It has different names with different partners. With the
Europeans it's "framework". With the Egyptians it's the
"endgame". With the Americans it's "the political horizon". But the concept is almost one," Aboul Gheit told reporters.

Solana, who will also visit Israel and the Palestinian
territories, said the European Union, a member of the quartet along with the United States, the United Nations and Russia, was serious about reviving the peace process.

"Please be assured the European Union is going to do its
utmost to try and see if we can move the process forward in a real manner -- not just theoretically or rhetorically," he said.

Pistolese urges Israel to ease restrictions on Egypt-Gaza crossing
The head of the European mission monitoring operations at the Egypt-Gaza border, Lt. Gen. Pietro Pistolese, urged Israel on Thursday to stop restricting operations there, saying disruptions only promote "extremism and terror."

Pistolese said Thursday that no weapons have been smuggled through the crossing since it was opened, and that all weapons that were discovered were destroyed.

Since the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June, Pistolese said, the crossing has been open only 39 days. During that time 80,000 people have passed through it, he said, though 550,000 could have used it if it had been open the entire period.

Israel, citing security alerts, has kept the Rafah terminal - Gaza's main gateway to the outside world - closed for about 80 percent of the time since Shalit's capture.

The European monitors at Rafah were deployed as part of a U.S.-brokered agreement of November 2005 that was to ease movement in and out of Gaza. The agreement was reached two months after Israel withdrew from the coastal strip.

Pistolese said it is counterproductive to deprive Gaza's 1.4 million people of access to the rest of the world.

"It is vital that there is a return to normal operations at Rafah as soon as possible," Pistolese told a conference at the Netanya Academic College. Keeping the border closed "only only encourages more people to resort to extremism and terror," said Pistolese, an Italian.