WASHINGTON — America and its Arab allies are rushing to finish last-minute planning for a diplomatic summit next week on possible Arab-Israeli negotiations and Iran’s nuclear program.

The summit of foreign ministers is likely to coincide with Secretary of State Rice’s visit to the Middle East, where she is scheduled to visit Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Arab territories, and Saudi Arabia. The conference, to be sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of oil-rich states in the Persian Gulf, appears to be a direct outgrowth of President Bush’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly earlier this month, in which he announced that he is sending Ms. Rice to the region.

On her visit, Mr. Bush said, the secretary will seek new momentum for Arab-Israeli negotiations, a sine qua non of allied cooperation on Iran policy and even counterterrorism, according to a recent speech by a senior State Department counselor, Philip Zelikow.

In its first meeting after the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hezbollah this summer, the Arab League officially announced that the negotiations between Arab states and Israel were finished.

While Hamas thus far has resisted efforts by the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to create a unity government that the Israelis might consider to be a more suitable negotiating partner, plans are under way for talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert.

Yesterday, Mr. Olmert said he hoped to meet with Mr. Abbas in the coming days, according to the Associated Press. But the Israeli leader also said he will not discuss a prisoner release or a widening of access to the Palestinian Arab territories in the first meeting. For her part, Ms. Rice has said she also hopes to talk with Mr. Abbas next week on her tour of the region, which kicks off October 1.

Both Mr. Olmert and the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, have denied press reports this week that Riyadh sent an envoy to meet with the Israeli prime minister. Saudi Arabia’s position since 2002 has been that peace with the Arab states is possible if Israel relinquishes all the territory it won in the 1967 war, a slight change from the earlier Saudi position never to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

One of the immediate stumbling blocks to any negotiations is the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Hamas gunmen from his border outpost on June 25. “I am not making gestures,” Mr. Olmert told Israel Radio yesterday. “Until Gilad Shalit is freed, I will not deal with freeing Palestinian prisoners.”

The AP quoted Mr. Olmert as saying he will move forward with his original plan to withdraw from Palestinian Arab territory in the West Bank if a larger peace accord cannot be reached.

That stance, however, represents another turnaround for Mr. Olmert, who said in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon this summer that his government would no longer pursue a withdrawal policy from the West Bank.

[Recent polls have shown that less than a quarter of Israelis are happy with Mr. Olmert’s job performance, while nearly 70% disapprove of his actions as prime minister, the AP reported yesterday.]