Israel's Olmert sets Feb.19 for Abbas, Rice talks
Source: Reuters
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan JERUSALEM, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday he would meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Feb. 19, for a "significant" bid to restart long stalled peace talks. The trilateral talks that could signal a new momentum in diplomatic efforts despite raging factional Palestinian violence in Gaza, will be held in the Middle East, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. McCormack said Rice "firmly believes that there are the underpinnings in the region that exist to make some progress, to exploit an opening and try to bring the sides closer together". Olmert said in a speech he looked forward to the talks as a "significant" development. He urged the moderate Abbas to resist pressure in his talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday with Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to defy Western demands for the Palestinian government to accept Israel and renounce violence. "I hope that Abu Mazen will resist all the temptations and all the pressures to cooperate with Hamas and to establish a government that does not recognise" the Jewish state, Olmert told American Jewish leaders. But Olmert did not rule out peace talks with a prospective joint government comprising Abbas's Fatah group and the Islamist Hamas whose charter calls for Israel's destruction. "If the Palestinian government, no matter who is part of it, will accept the basic principles (to recognise Israel)... then of course it would pave the way for further negotiations with Israel," Olmert said. TENSIONS FLARE AT JERUSALEM MOSQUE Despite the setting of a date for talks, tensions flared between Israel and the Palestinians over the start of an Israeli excavation near a compound housing the al-Asqa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site. Abbas's Fatah faction said if any damage were done to the mosque it "will lead to a termination" of a November ceasefire deal that has largely calmed Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza border area, and spark a "volcano of anger". Israel said the excavations in search of ancient artefacts beneath the compound known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, would not harm the Islamic holy site in Jerusalem's walled Old City. Israel plans at a later stage to build a pedestrian bridge at the site to replace a ramp that has weakened over the years that leads up to the complex. Israeli police have reinforced patrols in the Old City and restricted access to the mosque area to Palestinian men over the age of 45, in a bid, its spokesmen said, to avoid violence, after Islamic leaders urged followers to defend the compound. The United States said it would seek clarification from the Israeli government over the excavation. "We urge all parties to exercise great care when deciding whether and how to engage in any activity near sensitive religious sites," McCormack said in a statement. In Gaza, factional violence that has has killed 90 since December continued, despite a weekend truce deal. A gunman killed a local Hamas commander and wounded three other group members in a Gaza City shooting in which Hamas accused Fatah of staging an execution. A Fatah spokesman denied responsibility and a local clan claimed it had carried out the slaying, saying the Hamas commander was responsible for the killing of two family members. Fatah and Hamas have been locked in a power struggle since Hamas unseated Fatah and rose to power in March and the fighting escalated after Abbas angered Hamas by proposing early elections when unity talks failed in December. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
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