Last update - 00:00 08/11/2007
Officials: PA, Israel want U.S. help on summit draft
By Haaretz Service and Reuters
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are turning to U.S. mediators to bridge serious gaps in drafting a common approach to peace negotiations, officials on both sides said on Thursday.
A senior Palestinian negotiator told Reuters the two sides sought U.S. intervention on Tuesday after negotiators failed to resolve differences over a document they hope to present at a conference in the coming weeks in Annapolis, Maryland, that aims to set terms for relaunching peace talks.
Another senior Palestinian official said that when the sides disagreed this week over the terms of an earlier understanding that Washington would adjudicate in disputes over whether peace terms had been met, U.S. officials sent both a written text.
Palestinian officials also said the latest talks had shown that any document would be shorter on detail than they hoped.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said: "Anyone who thought it would be smooth sailing all the time was deluding himself."
A U.S. diplomatic source said U.S. officials expected to be involved in bridging differences.
Officials on both sides offered differing views on where disagreements lie. The Palestinian negotiator accused Israel of going back on an agreement made with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this week which, he said, called for U.S. officials to judge whether the sides were taking steps to implement the long-dormant "road map" accords of 2003.
But a senior Israeli official responded: "We agreed on that and there is no change."
Meanwhile, The Palestinian Authority has said it wants the preface to the joint statement at Annapolis to say that a final-status arrangement will be completed within six months of the signing of agreements at the summit.
The demand based on a document recently written by the Palestinian support team for the negotiations with Israel. Palestinian sources relayed to Haaretz the main points of the paper, which recommended that the preface indicate that both parties are to fulfill their mutual obligations in the first stage of the road map within six months. The recommendations were submitted to chief Palestine Liberation Organization negotiator Saeb Erekat.
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