US sets date for Mideast peace Summit
Middle East Desk Report

WASHINGTON—Seven years after the Middle East peace process ground to a halt, the United States has invited leaders to an international conference next week aimed at paving the way towards a Palestinian state.
US President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will open the conference involving more than 40 countries from around the world on Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland, State Department officials said.
“We feel this is a really important moment,” US Middle East envoy David Welch said Tuesday. “There is a common understanding that this is the moment in which they can change the picture and get serious negotiations started.”
The peace process has been frozen for seven years since Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton tried to broker a final settlement near the end of his presidency in 2000.
Years of violence followed the collapse of the Clinton-led negotiations, but Welch said there was now “critical mass” to revive the peace process.
In launching a new push for Palestinian-Israeli peace, the United States is hoping to enlist the support of moderate Arab states that are also concerned about the rising power of Iran following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Iran backs radical groups throughout the Middle East, including the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which seized power from Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in the Gaza Strip in June. Bush announced plans for the Annapolis conference a month later.
In addition to the Annapolis conference, Bush will host bilateral talks on Monday and Wednesday at the White House with both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman.
And on Monday night, Bush will give a speech to heads of delegations during a dinner hosted by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department in Washington, he added.
Washington issued invitations on Tuesday to around 100 delegates from the Middle East, as well as Europe and Asia, including Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Saudi Arabia, a key US ally that sponsored a 2002 Arab peace initiative now attracting Israeli attention, has also been invited, but no official replies to the invitations have yet been received, the State Department said.
Arab foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on Thursday to decide on their participation.
In his letter of invitation to Abbas, Bush made clear that the Annapolis meeting was intended to pave the way for comprehensive negotiations between the two sides, a senior Palestinian official said.
“This conference will signal broad international support for your courageous efforts and will be a launching point for negotiations leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the realization of Israeli-Palestinian peace, in accordance with the roadmap,” the official quoted Bush as saying.
The last was a reference to an internationally-drafted peace blueprint that has made next to no progress since its launch in 2003.
Amid a trail of broken Palestinian-Israeli accords, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino stressed that Bush was not betting everything on Annapolis.
“The president is not a gambler,” she said. “We recognize that at the Annapolis conference we are not going to have instant results.”
The two sides are expected to kick off negotiations on the thorniest issues of their decades-old conflict — borders, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem — after the Annapolis meeting.
But their negotiators remain at odds over the wording of a joint statement supposed to serve as a basis for the negotiations, despite weeks of intensive talks.
Nevertheless, Olmert insisted after last-minute talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt on Tuesday that he hoped to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians next year, albeit with difficulties and arguments.
Speaking on television, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called for broad Arab support in the talks, while saying her government would also have to make “gestures towards the Palestinians.”