VIENNA (AFP) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made a plea for Israelis and Palestinians to begin talking with each other after meeting with several leading Arab women at a conference Thursday.

"The best thing to do is to meet and not to wait until we can find a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," she said at a press briefing along with Palestine Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi and UN General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed al-Khalifa, who is from Bahrain.

Burundi Foreign Minister Antoinette Batumubwira and Iraqi First Lady Hero Talabani were also there.

"Let's meet today. Let's start to normalize our relations with the Arab world," Livni said, as violence between Israelis and Palestinians continued Thursday in the Gaza Strip despite international appeals for restraint.

With no sign of an end to the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will travel to Washington in three weeks' time to meet US President George W. Bush. Ashrawi said a two-day meeting here on women leaders networking for peace and security in the Middle East could "provide a new venue and provide us with a new momentum for peace."

"Nothing is to be gained if extremists on any side take over reality, not just the conflict. There is a vested interest, there is a constituency for peace, and (for) both sides in Palestine and Israel and within the Arab world to try to make it work," she said, referring to Israelis and Palestinians.

"This meeting is a starting point. It's not the end. I hope we work together in order to make that difference," Ashrawi said. Livni said that at "the end of the day, we share the same threats." She said that stopping terrorism "is something that works also for the benefit of Palestinian society itself" and she urged "a full cessation of violence and terrorism so we can find the common denominator amongst us." Ashrawi called for an end to violence by both Palestinians and Israelis but Livni said Israel had to respond to rocket attacks "as part of our responsibility to the Israeli citizens."

She said weapons "smuggling from Egypt to the Gaza Strip" was fanning the conflict. Austrian Foreign Minster Ursula Plassnik said: "No situation is hard enough to resist dialogue forever." "This was a conference of realists," she said, adding that "women do have the capacity and the necessity to be realists."

Plassnik and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had earlier Thursday called for more women to be given high-ranking positions in the United Nations.

The women's meeting brought together some 20 female ministers, diplomats and lawmakers from around the world. Rice told reporters: "Unless women are fully participant in their society, in terms of political participation, economic participation, these societies cannot really be fully democratic."