Olmert, Abbas Agree to Hold Biweekly Talks
Plan a Step Back From Rice Proposal

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

JERUSALEM, March 27 -- The biweekly meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday are intended to be the first step in rebuilding an active peace process, U.S. officials said, though Israeli officials said Rice scaled back a more ambitious agenda after objections from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The talks, expected to start in mid-April, will begin with such confidence-building measures as easing roadblocks on the West Bank. The agreement essentially resets the diplomatic calendar to the beginning of the year -- before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas disturbed the Israeli government by agreeing to a power-sharing government with the militant Islamic group Hamas that does not explicitly recognize Israel.

Rice said the two men had agreed that the ground-level talks could evolve into detailed discussions on the contours of a Palestinian state. "We're finally opening doors here, not closing them," Rice said at a news conference before her flight back to Washington.

Rice has made four trips to the region in four months but has been thwarted each time in getting the two sides to move substantially beyond incremental issues. Rice has argued that the Palestinians need to know the "political horizon" of a potential state, which is her code for discussing some of the final-status issues blocking a deal, but she has had difficulty overcoming Israeli skepticism.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Rice had signaled that the biweekly meetings should cover more than day-to-day issues. "We're hoping we can use this to move forward," Erekat said.

But Miri Eisin, Olmert's spokeswoman, said the most contentious subjects -- such as the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of refugees and Jerusalem -- would not be discussed in the biweekly meetings. "We may be talking about the political horizon," said Eisin, defining that term as "the steps needed before peace negotiations can begin." "But there will not be discussion of final-status issues."

Rice also has exhorted Arab states to reach out to Israel by reaffirming a five-year-old peace offer that holds the prospect of broad recognition of the Jewish state.

Before leaving Washington, Rice had said she wanted to set up parallel negotiating tracks with the Israelis and the Palestinians. "My primary goal is to establish a mechanism, a common approach, that I can use with them in parallel so that we are addressing the same issues," Rice said Friday. "That's really the key right now."

But that idea largely faded after Rice held her first meeting with Olmert over dinner Sunday, U.S. and Israeli officials said. Israeli officials said Olmert had problems with the "parallel" format and balked at the scope of the issues Rice wanted to raise. He refused to put on the table the core issues of the conflict.

During the meal, however, Olmert agreed to meet every other week with Abbas. Olmert had met with Abbas once since the Palestinian power-sharing government was formed this month, and Israeli officials suggested that he had planned to have regular meetings in any case. Olmert's domestic interest is served by holding regular meetings, because he can demonstrate diplomatic movement without making unpopular concessions.

Still, the mood has been sour between the two men since Abbas agreed to let his Fatah party join the Palestinian cabinet headed by a Hamas prime minister. Abbas said he reached the accord largely to end violence between the two factions.

Before Rice arrived in Jerusalem, Olmert had complained bitterly that Abbas had failed to secure the release of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, held in the Gaza Strip since June. The Shalit case has been a major stumbling block in improving Israeli-Palestinians relations, and Rice met privately Tuesday with the families of Shalit and two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah since July to demonstrate her concern.

Rice had originally planned to hold a news conference Monday night, outlining her ideas. She also brought along her chief speechwriter to craft her remarks. But the morning after the Olmert dinner she said she had decided to move the news conference because she was "fresher" in the morning. U.S. and Israeli officials haggled over her text until 11:30 p.m., yielding language that mixed the poetic with diplomatic drudge.

"These things are never particularly easy," Rice told reporters.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order not to upstage Rice, said the original plan changed because "we are nimble on our feet." But he said uncertainties about the future remain. "It probably will take us, before we get to where we'd like to be, many more months," he said. "But absent the effort, all the alternatives are worse."

Correspondent Scott Wilson contributed to this report.