"I'm still hopeful we'll get an agreement by the end of my presidency," President George W. Bush said at a news conference at the White House, after the meeting in Washington with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and State Secretary Condoleezza Rice. He will encourage peace negotiations, seeking a Middle East peace legacy.

On the other hand, he accused Hamas, the organization which controls the Gaza Strip, of trying to oppose peace efforts. Bush said he would not reach a deal with Hamas, the Islamist group which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization.

"They are a significant problem to world peace, or Middle Eastern peace. And that's the reason I'm not talking to them," Bush said.

"What you don't want is that the hopelessness and the vision of the extremists have no counter," Rice was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

The meeting came after former US President Jimmy Carter met the Palestinian group’s leadership and tried to determine them to begin peace talks with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. His visit was criticized by Condoleezza Rice.

But the road to peace has its obstacles and “difficult decisions” would have to be taken. Rice called on Israel to make "difficult decisions" to provide the Palestinians with the dignity of statehood, saying that they “have a chance to reach the basic contours of a settlement by the end of the year.”

Another problem is Syria; Rice said the Bush administration had tried to interest Syria in peacemaking, but the Syrian regime isn’t receptive to negotiations with Israel at this point. She compared Syria with “Iran’s sidecar” and she reminded about the nuclear program.

"Increasingly, the Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age," Rice said in a speech at the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee.