Abbas, Olmert meet but no sign of progress
Source: Reuters
(Adds quote from Israeli official, paragraph 6) By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM, March 11 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks on Sunday that yielded little sign of progress towards peace. "The meeting was very frank and very difficult," said Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Abbas aide who attended part of the 2-1/2 hour session. Olmert, in comments before hosting Abbas at his official Jerusalem residence, appeared to open the door to exploring whether a 2002 Saudi peace initiative could serve as an alternative track towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. "Many issues were discussed including the national unity government, which the Palestinian side stressed was an internal Palestinian affair," Dahlan told Reuters. Olmert has vowed to boycott the coalition government Abbas is forming with Hamas Islamists unless it recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts existing interim peace deals as demanded by the Quartet of international powers. "The prime minister presented the Quartet conditions and said that Israel cannot cooperate with a government or with a part of a government that does not respect these conditions," an Israeli government official said. However, Olmert has promised to keep a channel of communication open with the moderate Abbas, a policy promoted by the United States, which plans to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice back to the region in the next few weeks. Olmert and Abbas spent part of the session in face-to-face talks without aides present and agreed to talk "on a regular basis", an Israeli official said. Before the meeting, the third Olmert and Abbas have held since December, both sides played down expectations of a breakthrough. Neither leader made statements at the start or end of the talks. Last month's Saudi-brokered Palestinian coalition agreement that calmed weeks of warfare between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah faction contains a vague promise to "respect" previous Israeli-Palestinian accords. It does not, however, commit the incoming government to abide by those pacts, nor to accept international conditions which are key to the resumption of aid to the Palestinian Authority, which was cut off by the West after Hamas came to power a year ago. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said a unity government could be announced as early as Monday. ARAB LEAGUE In broadcast remarks before the session, Olmert looked ahead to an Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia at the end of the month and repeated that Israel saw "positive elements" in the Saudi peace initiative adopted by the group five years ago. Speaking to his cabinet, Olmert said he hoped those elements would be reaffirmed at the Riyadh discussions, a reference to the plan's offer of normal diplomatic relations with Israel. "We said more than once that the Saudi initiative is a subject we would be willing to treat seriously," he said. The proposal, however, came with terms Israel has said it could not accept: withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the return of Palestinian refugees to what is now the Jewish state. Palestinian officials said changing the plan would not be on the Arab League summit's agenda. Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state. The group continues to say it will not formally recognise Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri criticised the Hamas leadership over its deal with Fatah. "The leadership of Hamas surrendered to the Jews most of Palestine" to keep heading the Palestinian government, said the militant leader in an audio statement, parts of which were aired by Al Jazeera television. (Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
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