JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says no agreement has been signed with Palestinian President Abbas ahead of a U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says no agreement has been signed with Palestinian President Abbas ahead of a U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit. Meanwhile, Gaza militants fire several rockets and mortars at southern Israel, one of which is identified as Katyusha rocket. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday (October 7) to brief ministers on his latest meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as Israeli and Palestinian negotiations team prepared to begin drafting a joint document for a U.S.- sponsored summit expected in November. Olmert told the ministers that even though no agreements were reached between the parties, "inevitable diplomatic moves" will be taken by Israel. On Thursday, a day after he met Olmert in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that formal negotiations to create a Palestinian state could be completed six months after the Middle East conference. Palestinian officials said that final-status talks would be based on a joint document that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will begin drafting on Monday. They said the joint document, which will be presented to the conference in mid-to-late November, would touch on final status issues such as borders and the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, but would not go into "the minute details." "We will hear briefings about all these things, and afterward there will be continuous diplomatic discussions in the government, in the security cabinet, and in various forums formed in accordance with circumstances - in order to ripen the process of internal consensus within the government, as the inevitable diplomatic moves approach," Olmert said Sunday. Israeli and Palestinian officials said Abbas and Olmert on Wednesday agreed that final-status negotiations would begin after the conference but Olmert balked at setting a specific timeline for reaching a final deal. The upcoming conference is part of a U.S.-led effort to bolster Abbas and his West Bank-based government and to isolate Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June. Hamas has rejected the conference and said the Olmert-Abbas meetings would not address fundamental issues. Militants in Gaza continued to fire rockets and mortars at communities in southern Israel. Israeli media reported that at least four Qassam rockets and eight mortars hit the Negev desert. One of them destroyed a house in Kerem Shalom, located on the Israeli border with Gaza, but no casualties were reported. The rocket which landed in an open field outside Netivot, was 122 KM Katyusha, Israeli police reported.

ITN Source | October 7, 2007

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