WASHINGTON, Nov 25: US President George W. Bush will launch what is touted as the first substantive push for Israeli-Palestinian peace in seven years when he opens an international conference near here on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert arrived in Washington on Sunday and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas flew in late Saturday ahead of the conference in which they will seek to start negotiations for a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday confirmed Israel had dropped its initial objections to raising the Golan Heights during the conference.

Livni said Israel welcomed Arab states attending the meeting but said they should not be involved in bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The Arab world is not supposed to define the terms of the negotiations or be involved in them,” she told reporters earlier on board Olmert’s plane bound for Washington.

By having both sides delve straight into the thorniest issues like the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, the US administration says it aims to clinch a final deal before Bush leaves office in January 2009.

“Failure is not an option,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is fond of saying.

Washington pushed for a massive conference — gathering nearly 50 countries and organizations — in order to throw the broadest international support possible behind the “courageous efforts” of Olmert and Abbas.

In a coup for US diplomacy, a reluctant Saudi Arabia will sit at the same table with the Jewish state for the first time to discuss Middle East peacemaking.

Saudi Arabia has never recognised Israel and no senior figure from the state has held public talks with Israeli officials except for meetings at the United Nations and a 1996 international summit on fighting terrorism.

Saudi Arabia is the architect of an Arab peace initiative offering formal Arab diplomatic ties with Israel in return for an Israeli pullout from all land occupied in the 1967 war.

Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab states to have signed peace treaties with Israel, are alone in the 22-member Arab League to have full diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

The date for the conference was only confirmed last Tuesday, even though it had been in the works since Bush first announced plans for it in July.

In launching a new push for peace, the United States wants moderate Arab states involved, arguing that all sides share a concern about Iran’s rising influence following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Hamas has denounced the conference and threatened new attacks against Israel.

Bush will have to dispel Arab doubts he will drop his pro-Israel stance enough to wring meaningful concessions from the Jewish state. In the run-up to Annapolis, Israel freed Palestinian prisoners and stopped new settlements.

Major differences remain between the Israelis and Palestinians over core issues like the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The peace process has been frozen since former US president Bill Clinton tried to broker a final settlement near the end of his presidency in 2000.—AFP