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Bush set for May Mideast return
11/01/2008 21:05 - (SA)
Tel Aviv - President Bush said on Friday that he would return to the Mideast in May to continue pressing the Israelis and Palestinians into reaching a peace agreement and celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary.
"There's a good chance for peace and I want to help you," Bush said, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Israeli President Shimon Peres at the airport here, where he boarded Air Force One, ending his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
"Mr Prime Minister and Mr President, thank you very much for your invitation to come back. I'm accepting it now," Bush said on the tarmac.
From Israel, Bush headed to Kuwait, a tiny oil-rich nation his father fought a war over and one of only two invited guests to skip the splashy Annapolis, Maryland, rollout Bush hosted for the new US-backed peace talks. Getting a peace pact signed presumably would resolve the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian dispute and would be a positive milestone in Bush's presidential legacy.
During his two days of formal talks with Olmert, Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush laid out US expectations, saying that the two sides needed to get serious talks started quickly. On his way to visit Sunni Arab allies, Bush said he would ask them to reach out to the Jewish state.
"I carry with me a message of optimism about the possibilities of a peace treaty," Bush said with the two Israeli leaders. "I will share with them my thoughts about you and (Palestinian) President Abbas and the determination to work to see whether or not it's possible to come up with a peace treaty."
He had closed his round of talks on Thursday with a stern summation of his bottom lines for a peace pact he said should be completed this year. Although the goals and terms were not markedly different from past US statements, it was an unusually detailed list of benchmarks.
Bush urged Israel to end its 40-year occupation of the West Bank and said a Palestinian state should be contiguous, a nod to Palestinian opposition to a state broken into pieces by Israeli settlements and military installations.
At the same time, Bush came out on Israel's side on two important issues, implying that major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank should remain in Israeli hands in a final peace deal and that Palestinian refugees should not be resettled inside of Israel.
- AP
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