WEST BANK: Palestinian President Abbas says he will meet Israeli PM Olmert next week to discuss Saudi peace initiative

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday (April 10) he would hold talks next week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The meeting would be the first between the two leaders since they agreed, during a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month, to hold talks once every two weeks. "We will have a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert next week," Abbas told reporters during a visit to the West Bank town of Bethlehem where he met Roman Catholic Patriarch Michel Sabbah, and other Christian dignitaries. Sabbah was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the Latin Patriarch of the Holy Land in 1987. Abbas did not say where the talks would take place. A spokesman for Olmert had no immediate comment. The two leaders had last met at Israeli prime minister's official residency in Jerusalem on March 11. Abbas encouraged an endorsement of the Saudi-backed peace plan calling for Israel to quit all occupied Arab lands in exchange for peace. The 2002 plan touted by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice known as the Saudi initiative, offers Israel normal ties with Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. "If Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian Arab land, it will live in a sea of peace, stability and normalization. That means from Mauritania to Indonesia, all the countries then have to lift the Israeli flag, if that happens," Abbas said. Olmert has said that Abbas's power-sharing partnership with Hamas Islamists and the continued captivity of an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants 10 months ago, meant that no real progress towards Palestinian statehood could be made in their face-to-face meetings.

ITN Source | April 10, 2007

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