Leaders Voice Hope Ahead of Peace Summit

WASHINGTON — Hours before the opening of a high-stakes international conference on the Middle East, President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert, and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, expressed hope that peace finally could be achieved. A senior member of the Palestinian Arab delegation said today an elusive joint statement on the contours for future talks was within reach.The three leaders offered hopeful words, but in brief statements also hinted at the serious divisions that exist over the best path to peace. Messrs. Olmert and Abbas met separately with Mr. Bush at the White House.“I’m looking forward to continuing our serious dialogue with you and the president of the Palestinian Authority to see whether or not peace is possible. I’m optimistic,” Mr. Bush said at Mr. Olmert’s side. Later, after a similar meeting with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Bush said, “We want to help you. We want there to be peace. We want the people in the Palestinian territories to have hope.”Mr. Olmert said that international support — from Mr. Bush and also, presumably, from the Arab nations that will attend the conference — “is very important to us” and could make all the difference.“This time, it’s different because we are going to have a lot of participation in what I hope will launch a serious process of negotiations between us and the Palestinians,” Mr. Olmert said, referring to the talks expected to begin in earnest after this week’s American-hosted meetings.For his part, Mr. Abbas stressed when he appeared with Mr. Bush the need for talks to address key issues of Palestinian Arab statehood, sticky discussions that have doomed previous peace efforts — and for the president to be personally engaged.“We have a great deal of hope that this conference will produce permanent status negotiations, expanded negotiations, over all permanent status issues that would lead to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people,” he said. “This is a great initiative and we need his (Bush’s) continuing effort to achieve this objective.”After months of trying to forge a joint outline, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs have made an 11th-hour push in recent days to come up with a statement for presentation at tomorrow’s gathering in Annapolis, Md. It is to be the first time that Israel, a large group of Arab states, and international envoys from around the world will sit down together to try to relaunch a peace process. Later today, the conference gets under way with a dinner at the State Department.“We will reach a joint paper today or tomorrow,” a senior aide to Mr. Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said. “There is a persistent American effort to have this statement.”A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters at midday today that Secretary of State Rice is expected to meet with representatives of both sides at the department later today to discuss the statement.Talks on the joint statement had faltered over a Palestinian Arab desire that it address, at least in general terms, so-called final status issues — final borders, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian Arab refugees who lost homes in Israel following its 1948 creation.Israel has pressed for a broader, vaguer statement of commitment to two states living side-by-side in peace. It has promised to negotiate the contentious issues, however, in the formal negotiations that are to follow the conference.Mr. Bush will open the Annapolis conference by making clear in a speech that Middle East peace is a top priority for the rest of his time in office through January 2009, but he is expected to conclude that the time is not right for him to advance his own ideas on how to achieve that, the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said.

Leaders Voice Hope Ahead of Peace Summit

Leaders Voice Hope Ahead of Peace Summit

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