Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday said he was ready to meet Arab leaders to discuss their peace initiative but that no conditions should be set in advance.
“I invite these 22 leaders of the Arab nation that are ready to make that kind of peace with Israel to come, whenever they want, to sit down with us and start to talk and present their ideas,” Olmert said in Jordan.
“If it is difficult and they are ready to invite me to any place where the 22 will gather together, I am ready to come,” he told Nobel laureates in the ancient city of Petra before talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
“If you want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and listen to you very carefully. We will have, of course, comments about it. We will exchange views.”
Olmert said he was always ready for talks with “moderate Arab countries that are part of efforts to achieve peace”.
“The Arab peace initiative is very interesting,” he said, but added: “We don’t set conditions and I guess no one will set conditions to us.”
The plan, adopted in March at an Arab summit, offers Israel full normalisation of ties in exchange for withdrawal from Arab land seized in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Israeli initially rejected the Saudi-drafted peace plan when it was first floated in 2002 but Olmert has since cautiously welcomed parts of the initiative although Israel wants amendments to the refugee issue.
Israel also insists that talks with Arab states should be in parallel with bilateral peace negotiations with the Palestinians, which have been at a standstill since 2001.
Olmert said he would continue to meet moderate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, but he pinned the failure to achieve any peace breakthrough on Palestinian factions that refuse to recognise the Jewish state’s right to exist.
“I am not certain that at all times it is obvious that all the Palestinians, all the organisations share with President Abbas his vision,” Olmert said.
“The problem is how to make the different divisions within the Palestinians disappear so that there will be one disciplined position that will be respected by all the Palestinians,”
Abbas spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeina, who was present at the Petra conference, accused the Israelis of foot-dragging.
“The peace process is frozen … nothing is happening but we hope it will happen soon. We are ready for peace negotiations but the Israelis are not ready,” he said. — AFP