Abbas, Olmert pledge ‘meaningful’ understandings
Bureau Report

JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas agreed on Friday to try to find a meaningful agreement to take to a planned Middle East meeting, an Israeli official said.
“They agreed to try to reach, as soon as possible, a meaningful statement,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said after two and a half hours of lunchtime talks between the two at Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams tasked with crafting the joint document for a conference scheduled in Annapolis, Maryland later this year also attended the talks, and Eisin described the atmosphere as “very good.”
“Both sides emphasised the commitment to implementing the phases of the roadmap as part of the statement that they are drafting ahead of the meeting” in the United States, Eisin told reporters.
The internationally drafted peace blueprint has made next to no progress since it was adopted in June 2003 and has already missed its first deadline for creating an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. “Up until now, there has been a certain bug (hitch) in the team negotiations because it was unclear how the roadmap would feature in a joint declaration,” a senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
“Now the two leaders agreed to move forward according to the roadmap.”
Israel wants the Palestinians to carry out immediately the first phase of the roadmap, which calls for an end to violence and on Israel to freeze Jewish settlement activity and dismantle outposts built since March 2001.
The Palestinians said they agreed to honour their commitments but also called on Israel to fulfil its own requirements under the first phase.
Abbas and Olmert “agreed to immediately and mutually implement commitments laid out for each side in the first phase of the roadmap,” senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told a news conference in the West Bank.
Abbas and Olmert agreed that both teams would conduct “ongoing and intense” discussions to reach a joint document for the US conference, Erakat said. Israel said the negotiating teams would meet again next Wednesday.
But Abbas also objected to Israel’s approval of electricity and fuel cuts against the Gaza Strip in an effort to curb rocket attacks by militants.
“A million and a half Palestinians have suffered enough and Israel cannot use humanitarian needs in order to put pressure,” Erakat quoted Abbas as telling Olmert during the meeting.
Eisin said Abbas presented Olmert with a poster of 50 flags of Muslim and Arab states that were committed to normalising relations with Israel once it makes peace with the Palestinians.
Israeli air strikes and troops killed five Palestinian fighters in Gaza on Friday, as the Jewish state pressed its campaign to curb rocket fire after backing moves to cut power to the territory.
The bitter clashes marked the deadliest day of Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip for a month and came as Israeli and Palestinian leaders Ehud Olmert and Mahmud Abbas were holding political talks in Jerusalem.
Two Israeli air strikes in the Shujayah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City killed three Islamist militants and wounded five, medical officials said as Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters clashed on the ground.
Two of the dead and two of the wounded belonged to the armed wing of hardline movement Islamic Jihad. The third dead militant was named as Mahmud Hasouna, 25, from the armed wing of the Islamist movement Hamas.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that two air strikes were called in against gunmen approaching an Israeli force, which thrust into the Shujayah area in an incursion early on Friday.