Olmert says path to peace deal "far away"

Olmert and Abbas agreed last week the joint document would be the basis for final-status negotiations that would begin after the conference in mid-to-late November.

Final-status talks -- over the borders of a future Palestinian state and the fate of Jerusalem and millions of Palestinian refugees -- broke down in early 2001 amid violence.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told the official WAFA news agency that negotiations getting under way on Monday were meant to chart a course toward comprehensive peace. Diplomatic failure, he said, could "drown the region in violence and chaos".

Olmert only alluded cryptically to "inevitable decisions" that will have to be taken by Israel as part of a possible agreement to create a Palestinian state.

Olmert said these decisions would "include foregoing the full and absolute implementation of the dreams that sustained our national ethos for many years".

WITHDRAWALS

He offered no specifics but he has used similar language in the past to signal plans for withdrawing from Arab land captured in war and to which some Jews claim a biblical birthright.

Olmert’s remarks were interrupted several times by rightist lawmakers who demanded that the prime minister explain his plans for the future of Jerusalem.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Likud opposition leader, accused Olmert of already agreeing to cede the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.

"One outcome is clear -- the Israeli army leaves, Hamas enters," Netanyahu said in a speech following Olmert’s.

The assault appeared aimed largely at Olmert’s top deputy, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, who said earlier on Monday that Israel should be prepared for future negotiations over dividing Jerusalem and ceding authority over some of its holiest sites.

"Wouldn’t it be the right deal today for the Palestinians, the Western world and the international community to recognise (Israel’s) annexation of ... (Jewish) neighbourhoods as part of Jerusalem, and for us to quit the Arab neighbourhoods," Ramon told Israel Radio.

He said talk of ceding control over holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, which he referred to as the "holy basin", was premature for now. But Ramon added: "We need to say there will be a special regime in the ’holy basin’, which we will talk about in the future."

Ramon’s public comments on the most sensitive issues in the conflict have stoked speculation he is floating trial balloons on behalf of Olmert ahead of the international gathering expected to take place in Annapolis, Maryland.

Ramon is one of Olmert’s closest confidants, but the prime minister, weakened by corruption scandals and last year’s Lebanon war, has not committed publicly to his deputy’s ideas.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Avida Landau and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Wafa Amr and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah)