CAIRO, Nov 23: Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Friday agreed to attend a US-sponsored peace conference next week, giving a boost to Washington’s efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.

But Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said Israel and the Palestinians had failed to agree on a joint document to be presented at Tuesday’s meeting in the US city of Annapolis, underscoring public pessimism about the chances of the meeting’s success.

Arab ministers meeting in Cairo, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, “have accepted the invitation to attend the Annapolis conference on a ministerial level,” according to a statement after the talks.

Washington is seeking as wide an Arab participation as possible at the conference, aimed at kick-starting peace talks after seven years of stalemate, and the involvement of states such as Syria and Saudi Arabia is seen as crucial.

But the Arab ministers had sent an urgent letter to the United States asking it to “explicitly” include the issue of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on the agenda.

Despite the Arab vote of confidence, Abbas told the ministers that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had so far failed to agree on a joint document for the meeting.

“We wanted through our negotiations to reach a joint document but unfortunately we could not agree on the wording because each side has its own point of view,” Abbas said.

Major differences exist between the Israelis and Palestinians over the joint document, even over what the statement should be called.

The Palestinian leadership want a timeline on efforts to resolve the thorniest issues such as the status of east Jerusalem, the boundaries of a future Palestinian state and the status of Palestinian refugees.

Israel instead wants a less detailed document, stating a list of principles on which to base negotiations.

Nonetheless, Abbas urged the Arab ministers to seize the “historic opportunity” for peace at Annapolis.

Israel welcomed the Arab decision with foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev saying “any step by the Arab world to support the process of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation is a positive step”.

He said: “We hope to see an Arab contribution to this process and it is clear that peace will require significant steps from Israel as well as from the Arab world.”

But Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June in a move that has split the Palestinians into two, urged Arab countries not to take part in the US conference and not to normalise ties with Israel.

“We hope that Arab countries will not participate in the conference, as such a presence will allow a normalisation with Israel for free and will increase its aggressions (against the Palestinians),” spokesman Ayman Taha told AFP.

Hamas is planning its own “counter-conference” in Gaza on Monday and is staging demonstrations on the day of the Annapolis talks.

Olmert warned in comments published on Friday that a failure of efforts to find a peace deal would have “deadly” results for the Jewish state.

“It will result in Hamas taking over Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank), to a weakening or even the disappearance of the moderate Palestinians,” he was quoted as saying by the Haaretz newspaper. “Unless a political horizon can be found, the results will be deadly.”

On Thursday, Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa said any peace with Israel must be based on an Arab peace blueprint, which offers normalisation of ties with the Jewish state if it withdraws from Arab land occupied in 1967.

US President George W. Bush has invited Israel, the Palestinians and officials from more than 40 countries to Annapolis in the hope of making progress in peace efforts before his term ends in January, 2009.

Rice said on Wednesday that Washington wanted “as broad an Arab participation as possible.” The US administration had initially wanted to limit the agenda to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but has decided to broaden discussions to satisfy several Arab countries.

“There is very clear understanding among everybody that this is a meeting about the Palestinians and the Israelis. But nobody denies that you will eventually have to resolve the Syria-Israeli track, the Lebanon-Israeli track, and ultimately that there has to be normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab world,” Rice said.—AFP