Rice: Palestinians 'losing hope'

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has told an American Jewish audience that young Palestinians are losing hope for an agreement with Israel.

“Increasingly, the Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age,” Ms Rice, 53, told The American Jewish Committee at its 102nd annual meeting in Washington.

While insisting that the Bush administration would never yield to dealing with Hamas militants, Ms Rice said: “What you don’t want is that the hopelessness and the vision of the extremists have no counter.”