Rice travels next week to Paris, Israel, West Bank

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Israel and the West Bank next week to try to nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward a peace deal this year despite Israel's political turmoil.

Rice will travel first to Paris to attend an Afghan donors conference on Thursday and then to the Middle East, where the corruption scandal dogging Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has raised deep doubts about the chances of a peace agreement.

Olmert has rebuffed calls that he resign over allegations that he took envelopes stuffed with cash from a Jewish-American businessman.

Both, Olmert, who has said he would resign if indicted, and the New York-based businessman have denied any wrongdoing.

Israeli officials close to the prime minister have said his strategy will be to try to push ahead with peace negotiations as if nothing has changed and hope that the corruption investigation does not end in charges against him.

But given the political uncertainty, he may have even less room to maneuver in terms of both the peace talks themselves and in meeting U.S. demands that he ease travel and trade restrictions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

"I know there's a lot of political turmoil in Israel," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "That is not our concern. ... We're focused on the substance of this process and trying to move it forward with both sides."

The State Department said Rice would travel from June 11 to June 16, making stops in Paris, where she will attend the International Support Conference for Afghanistan and join President George W. Bush for meetings with French officials.

She then visits Jerusalem and Ramallah. McCormack said she would discuss, among other things, the situation in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas Islamists seized control last June, and the effort "to achieve agreement this year on the establishment of a Palestinian state."

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, editing by Chris Wilson)