Olmert probe clouds Abbas talks
Israeli corruption investigation overshadows push for Palestinian-Israeli deal.
Israelis ‘cynical’
She said: “It takes a lot to shock the Israeli public.
A few hours before the talks, Olmert met Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state – their second meeting in less than 48 hours.
Rice has repeatedly urged Israel to take steps to ease the movement and access for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman, declined to provide any details about the meeting, saying only that “it was a one-on-one meeting that lasted about one hour”.
More talks
Olmert is due to host Abbas at his official residence in Jerusalem for their third meeting in less than a month.
The two have held similar meetings several times aimed at advancing peace talks which have made little progress since they were restarted last November amid great fanfare at a US-sponsored conference in the city of Annapolis
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, said Monday’s talks would include a broad look at how the negotiations are proceeding.
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| Analysts says little progress is being made since the Annapolis conference [AFP] |
He also said Abbas would urge the Israelis to curb settlement activity and lift many of the military checkpoints they have erected throughout the West Bank.
The negotiations have stumbled amid violence in Gaza and Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, including occupied east Jerusalem, which has prompted renewed US and international calls to freeze all settlement activity.
On Sunday, Rice made unusually direct remarks about the consequences of Israeli construction and roadblocks in the West Bank, saying she “continues to raise with the Israelis the importance of creating an atmosphere that is conducive to negotiations”.
“That means doing nothing, certainly, that would suggest that there is any prejudicing of the final terms” of a deal setting up a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank, Rice said.
Rice, who arrived in Israel on Saturday, said she remained hopeful the two sides could strike a peace deal by the time George Bush, the US president, leaves office in January 2009.
Bush is scheduled to visit Israel next week to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation.
Roadblock review
Palestinians say that Israel has removed only small barriers or partially dismantled obstacles despite pledging to pull them down.
Rice said she will question the “qualitative character'” of some of the roadblocks Israel has already removed.
“Not all roadblocks are created equal,” she said.
“The first thing we are going to do is to review the ones that were supposedly moved.”
“We don’t want to get into a numbers game where you just remove ‘X’ number of roadblocks but it’s not improving the lives of the Palestinians.”
Since 2000, Israel set up a network of hundreds of checkpoints, gates and barriers in the occupied West Bank.
After Rice’s last trip in late March, Israel said it planned to remove 61 barriers but a UN survey subsequently found that only 44 obstacles had been scrapped and that most were of little or no significance.