PM to Abbas: Israel won't undermine final status talks

Israel will not undermine negotiations toward a final-status agreement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting in Jerusalem yesterday.

"Israel will take no steps that would undermine the ability to reach a final-status agreement or that would delay the negotiations," Olmert told Abbas during their first meeting since the Annapolis conference a month ago.

The prime minister made the statement in response to Palestinian complaints about the announced tender for the construction of 307 new homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa. However, he did not promise that the tender would be halted.

According to one government source, "the sides resolved the differences that had been weighing on the talks and agreed to proceed with negotiations on the core issues." That is the term used to describe the thorniest disputes between Israel and the Palestinians, namely Jerusalem, refugees and borders.

"Both sides wanted to resolve the crisis and recognized that there is no point in stalling the entire process over such an issue," explained another senior government source.

According to that source, Olmert and Abbas agreed that the matter of construction in the territories, as well as in Jerusalem, will be discussed during the negotiations on the core issues.

The two also agreed to resume their biweekly meetings, and to have their negotiating teams meet again next week. At that meeting, the teams will seek to reach an agreement on a framework for talks on the core issues.

The Palestinians also raised the issue of a prisoner release, and Olmert told Abbas that Israel intended to "loosen" its definition of "blood on their hands," the euphemism used in Israel to describe Palestinians who were involved in murdering Israelis.

"We are considering the release of veteran prisoners who we are sure will not go back to terrorism, but there is still no decision on this matter," the senior government source said.

At the start of the meeting, Abbas expressed the Palestinians' opposition to further construction at Har Homa and protested the issuance of the tender. In response, Olmert said that "Israel will not construct new settlements, will not confiscate land and will evacuate the illegal outposts."

"Israel wishes to conduct the negotiations with goodwill," the prime minister added.

Two earlier meetings of the negotiating teams, headed respectively by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia, had gone nowhere, as the talks stalled over the issue of settlement construction.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned both Olmert and Abbas and asked them to use their meeting to resolve the impasse. "It is important to me that you progress," Rice told the two leaders, adding that they must not allow the differences between them to widen.