Israeli PM ready to meet Abbas: Blair in ME to revive talks
JERUSALEM, Sept 9: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to hold his first summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas immediately, Israeli officials said on Saturday.
The officials said Mr Olmert delivered the message during talks on Saturday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but ruled out any gestures towards the Palestinians before militants in Gaza free abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Mr Blair met Mr Olmert at the start of a Middle East visit aimed at encouraging Israelis and Palestinians to take the first steps back towards the negotiating table. Peace talks collapsed in 2000 before the start of the Palestinian uprising.
Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip over two months ago after militants captured Corporal Shalit in a cross-border raid. Over 210 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the operation.
Mr Blair arrived for talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials, leaving behind him the feuding in Britain’s ruling party that forced him to concede this week that he will leave office within a year.
Mr Blair is also due to hold talks in the next few days with Palestinian officials, sources in the region say.
“This is not going to be about big statements or big agreements. What it is about is about getting ... people thinking again about how we start a political process,” Mr Blair’s spokesman said before the trip.
It may not seem a favourable time to attempt to restart the stalled Middle East peace process.
Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mainly soldiers, were killed in a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas triggered by Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, during an offensive in Gaza to try to free another soldier captured by militants. Blair is due to meet the families of the abducted soldiers during the trip.
Despite a push by Europe and the Arab League to revive the Middle East peace process, peace talks are seen in Israel as fanciful.
The Lebanon conflict forced Mr Olmert to acknowledge this week he was shelving his centrepiece plan to unilaterally withdraw from parts of the occupied West Bank in the absence of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
BELIEF IN PEACE DRIVE: But the Lebanon war has only reinforced Mr Blair’s belief in the importance of trying to restart a peace process that collapsed in 2000.
“What has happened in Lebanon and Gaza will happen again unless we deal with the underlying causes of confrontation,” Blair said during a visit to the United States in July.
During that same visit, Blair argued that an “arc of extremism” stretched across the Middle East and the only way the West could beat it was to win a battle of values as well as through force.
Part of this battle of values meant bending “every sinew of our will” to making peace between Israel and Palestine, he said.
But Blair’s prestige is undermined by the fact that he will not be in power a year from now. Ironically, Blair’s strong support for the US line during the Lebanon war fuelled dissent among some members of his Labour Party that flared into open rebellion against Blair this week.
A key question mark over Blair’s trip is whether his mission is sanctioned by the United States, the only country whose mediation would carry great weight in Israeli eyes.
A senior US official said this week that Washington would like to see talks resumed, but gave no indication that President George W. Bush’s administration was ready to plunge into the fray.
“The Prime Minister and President Bush speak regularly on this matter,” Mr Blair’s spokesman said.—Reuters
