The US had promised earlier this year to focus more attention on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. And it seems to be living up to its word. Just days after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ventured to Jerusalem to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, she came to Berlin for a meeting with the Mideast Quartet to talk about the way forward.

The group, made up of Russia, the US, the European Union, and the United Nations wanted to discuss the situation in the face of a new power-sharing pact in the Palestinian Authority between Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party and the Islamist group Hamas. The two groups agreed in Mecca last week to form a so-called "unity government" to end weeks of fighting between the two groups.

Rice left Berlin on Thursday amid a swirl of police cars, helicopters and motorcycles. But behind her, she left questions as to whether any progress has been made, given the relatively weak positions of both Olmert (abysmal approval ratings along with a handful of damaging governmental scandals) and Abbas (a tenuous grip on authority that has him sharing power with the radical Islamists from Hamas).

The answer seems to be, not much. Still, so the theory goes, any talking is better than no talking at all. But why now all of a sudden?

According to those in the know, the Quartet, shelved in recent years because the US was busy with Iraq, has been revived largely at the behest of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It seems she asked President Bush to unfold the Roadmap once again and join the Europeans in another peace push. She had said, prior to taking over the EU's rotating presidency at the beginning of the year, that she would focus some of Europe's attention on the Middle East. The talks in Berlin seem to be the first step.

But will there be a second? Europe and the Russians want to engage the new Palestinian government, but the US is unsure. Hamas, after all, is considered a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU, and Washington is wary of being seen as dealing directly with the Islamist group. Still, something needs to be done to prop up a Palestinian Authority that is suffering mightily under a Western freeze in aid payments to the Authority put in place when Hamas won general elections early last year.

Hamas has not made it any easier. Even as Abbas got the group to agree to "respect" existing treaties with Israel, the group still refuses to renounce violence and will not recognize Israel's right to exist.

"How can it be that you have discussions about peace when a party will not renounce violence," Rice wondered during her trip. The Quartet demanded that any Palestinian government explicitly recognize Israel.

Hamas may be listening. According to Itar-Tass on Thursday, Hamas political head Khaled Mashaal is heading to Moscow on Sunday to discuss the situation. The trip would be Mashaal's second in a year after a journey to the Russian capital last March which broke the international isolation of Hamas -- and irked Israel as well.

The next Quartet meeting is set to take place in the "near future" in Cairo, according to a Thursday report from the German daily, Die Welt.