Olmert to meet Abbas
2006-05-21 10:30
Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas after his return from this week's summit in Washington, a leading member of his cabinet said on Sunday.
Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who will himself meet Abbas at a conference in Egypt on Sunday, said the Abbas-Olmert meeting would be an opportunity to assess the chances of relaunching the stalled peace process.
"There will be a meeting between the prime minister and Abu Mazen (Abbas) after his return from the United States in order to verify the possibility of resuming the negotiations," said Peres, a former prime minister who worked closely with Abbas on the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords.
Olmert was due to fly out of Israel to Washington later Sunday for his first meeting with Bush since winning a March 28 general election.
Peres said it was vital that Israel coordinate its position on how to proceed with the peace process, which has made no progress for over a year.
"We should revive the negotiations, but we must first coordinate our positions with the Americans," he told Israeli radio ahead of his departure for Egypt.
Peres and four other Israeli cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, were expected to meet Abbas on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
They will represent the first official talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian Authority president since the radical Islamist movement Hamas won January's parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Speaking in Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday, Abbas said the meetings "will certainly pave the way for a meeting" with Olmert.
Abbas, a moderate from the former ruling Fatah faction, is committed to a negotiated settlement to the Middle East conflict despite the rise to power of Hamas which refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist nor renounce violence.
As president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Abbas is responsible for peace negotiations and not the Hamas-led government.