/ 26 October 2007

Abbas, Olmert hope to break stalemate

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged on Friday to work towards a meaningful agreement for a United States conference following major disagreement on how to proceed.

The two leaders met for two-and-a-half hours with their chief negotiators responsible for crafting a joint document for the conference — tentatively expected next month — in a bid to unblock the stalemate.

Despite outward signs of progress, Friday’s talks were overshadowed by the deadliest day of Israeli-Palestinian violence in a month with five Palestinian fighters killed and two Israeli soldiers lightly wounded in the Gaza Strip.

”They agreed to try to reach, as soon as possible, a meaningful statement,” Israeli government spokesperson Miri Eisin said after the lunchtime talks, the second Abbas-Olmert meeting this month, ended in Jerusalem.

Eisin said that during the talks both sides emphasised that a commitment to implementing a stalled, internationally drafted peace blueprint would be part of the statement for the conference.

No date has yet been announced for the US meeting, which could serve as a launchpad for reviving full-blown peace talks after a seven-year hiatus.

”Both sides emphasised the commitment to implementing the phases of the road map as part of the statement that they are drafting ahead of the meeting” in the US, Eisin told reporters.

The internationally drafted peace blueprint has made next to no progress since it was adopted in June 2003, and has already missed its first deadline for creating an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel.

Abbas and Olmert ”agreed to immediately and mutually implement commitments laid out for each side in the first phase of the road map”, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told a news conference in the West Bank.

Israel wants the Palestinians to carry out immediately the first phase of the road map, which calls for an end to violence and on Israel to freeze Jewish settlement activity and dismantle outposts built since March 2001.

The content of the document, which is supposed to outline a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been a source of serious disagreement — although Eisin described the atmosphere at Friday’s talks as ”very good”.

Previously Israel accused the Palestinians of trying to exceed agreed parameters, while the Palestinians charged that Israel was refusing to define the basis of a permanent solution to the conflict linked to a timetable.

The Palestinians want the document to tackle the most intractable problems of the conflict — namely borders, refugees and the status of Jerusalem — while Israel has favoured a looser statement.

Abbas also raised strong objections to Israel’s approval on Thursday of power cuts being imposed on the Gaza Strip because of Palestinian rocket fire.

”A million-and-a-half Palestinians have suffered enough and Israel cannot use humanitarian needs in order to put pressure,” Erakat quoted Abbas as telling Olmert during the meeting.

The US has been scrambling to try to ensure a substantive conference. On a rare visit to the region, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met Abbas and Olmert separately on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also return to Israel and the occupied West Bank next week for her eighth visit this year, on another mission to help both sides draft the joint document. — Sapa-AFP