MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A break in the bloodshed, that's the topic of talks in the Middle East while the U.S. and Egypt work to secure a truce between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Israeli lawmakers debate the U.S.-backed roadmap for peace. CNN's Matthew Chance on the line now from Gaza City, via videophone, hello, Matthew.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via videophone): Hello to you as well, Miles. And from Gaza a lot of moves underway to try and broker some kind of peace deal with the militant groups here. The Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in Gaza to ask those militant groups to end their campaign of violence against Israelis as part of the U.S.-backed roadmap peace plan. He's been meeting this evening we're told with members only though of his fatah (ph) organization before holding talks later on. He hasn't held them yet but he'll be holding them later on with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Earlier a team of Egyptian security officials failed apparently to persuade the militants. They were here in Gaza. They failed to persuade the militants to call a ceasefire ending those talks without breakthrough. Both Palestinian and Israeli officials have been discussing over the past few days the possibility of some kind of peace deal which would involve an Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in exchange for Israel abandoning or suspending its policy of assassination and the Islamic Jihad is saying they are prepared to call some kind of truce if they have concrete guarantees from Israel. Abu Mazen, the Palestinian prime minister, is here to try to give them those concrete guarantees but there is a lot of resentment remember here amongst the million or so Palestinians in Gaza and Abu Mazen may have to convince more than just the militant groups that peace is the way forward in this way.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, Matthew Chance in Gaza thank you very much - Kyra. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
A Break in the Bloodshed