September 26, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1429

WASHINGTON, Sept 25: US President George Bush on Thursday told visiting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas he remained “hopeful” for a Middle East peace breakthrough before he leaves the White House in January.

“It's not easy. No doubt it must be frustrating at times for you, because it's hard work to get a state after all these years,” Bush, the first sitting US president to call for creating an independent Palestinian state, told Abbas.

“Hope will remain, Mr President. We cannot live without hope. We will continue to work to achieve and realize that hope,” the Palestinian leader said through an interpreter as they met in the Oval Office.

Israel, the Palestinians, and the United States had committed at a November 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to revive peace talks and work towards a hoped-for agreement on creating a Palestinian state in 2008.

“I've got four more months left in office, and I'm hopeful that the vision that you and I have worked on will come to pass, and my only pledge to you is that I'll continue to work hard to see that it can come to pass,” said Bush.

“We will continue to work with you, and we will continue to keep the hope alive in order to reach a political solution for our issue and for the Middle East,” Abbas pledged.

Forty days before the US elections, four months before Bush's term ends, all sides have worked to show that the political calendar won't slow efforts to create a Palestinian state living side by side at peace with Israel.

And continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, deadlock on core issues like Palestinian borders or rival claims to Jerusalem, have dogged the talks since they were revived in Annapolis in 2007.

“But, nevertheless, there is a firm determination on your part and on my part to give the Palestinians a place where there can be dignity and hope,” Bush said as they met in his Oval Office.

The vastly unpopular US president's waning influence, the urgent demands of the US financial crisis, and political turmoil in Israel as it seeks to build a new government after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation have all clouded prospects for an accord.

The Palestinian leader and Israeli prime-minister-designate, Tzipi Livni, have pledged to work together on peace efforts.

Abbas said late Wednesday that the Palestinians were committed to peaceful negotiations, stressing that near-daily clashes between Israelis and Palestinians over 2000-2007 had “destroyed our lives and everything we had.”Privately, White House aides say they are not ruling out a breakthrough but mostly want to be sure that the process does more than tread water — and does not collapse — between now and the new US president's arrival in January.

Palestinian officials say they will not be squeezed into accepting a partial peace deal that does not satisfy their hopes or defers the toughest issues.

“As of today, Israel has not taken the necessary decisions to bring about an agreement, and the international community that came together at Annapolis must act to save the peace process by putting pressure on Israel,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said before the talks.

The meeting drew a denunciation from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which drove Abbas loyalists from Gaza in June 2007 in a week of bloody street battles and seized power in the impoverished coastal strip of 1.5 million people.

Israel and the West have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group and have boycotted Palestinian governments that include the Islamist movement, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 but is sworn to Israel's destruction.—AFP