(Updates throughout with Cheney quotes) By Tabassum Zakaria JERUSALEM, March 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threatened its security. Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the U.S.-sponsored peace talks by expanding Jewish settlements, refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who fire cross-border rockets into the Jewish state. "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction," Cheney told a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security." Cheney said the United States's role was not to "dictate the outcome" of the peace talks, launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January. "Reaching the necessary agreement will require tough decisions and painful concessions by both sides but America is committed to moving the process forward," Cheney said. Cheney will visit the occupied West Bank over the weekend and meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad before leaving for Turkey, his last stop on a nine-day visit to the Middle East region. Israel tightened its economic and military cordon around the Gaza Strip after Hamas Islamists routed Abbas's more secular Fatah forces and seized control of the coastal territory in June. Bush made his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank in January and said he was optimistic a peace deal could be reached before he left office. Bush is expected to make another trip this spring. The talks have shown little sign of progress and have been slowed by increasingly heated disputes over Jewish settlement building near Jerusalem and an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 120 Palestinians. The United States says neither Israel nor the Palestinians have done enough to meet their commitments under a long-stalled "road map" peace plan. The plan calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity and to uproot outposts built in the West Bank without government authorisation. It asks the Palestinians to rein in militants. (Additional reporting by Avida Landau; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Richard Meares)
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader dismissed as prime minister by President Mahmoud Abbas, hugs senior Hamas leader Sayed Seyam (L) before giving a speech in Gaza in this March 12, 2008 ...
