AMMAN/GAZA, 30 August 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned yesterday that a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference to be held later this year could fail unless Israel agrees on a framework of core issues.

“I don’t think that conference will be useful if we go to it without clarifications for a solution and without a declaration of principles within a framework,” Abbas said during a visit to Amman, a palace statement said.

Abbas met King Abdallah in Amman after a fresh round of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem on Tuesday. The Amman talks were part of consultations to ensure that the conference “will be successful,” Abbas said, noting there were still questions concerning the date of the meeting, attendance and the agenda.

On July 16, US President George W. Bush urged moderate Arab nations to reach out to Israel, shore up the beleaguered Abbas and join an international conference in the fall to jump-start political progress.

Earlier this week, Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal also said he expected the conference to fail because it would exclude “key players in the region” and lean “toward Israel’s best interest.” Hamas is boycotted by Israel, the United States and the European Union as a terror group. It became further isolated after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.

The Palestinians want a detailed framework agreement on core issues such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees, while Israel has talked about a more vague declaration of principles. The Jordanian monarch said he backs the Palestinian position “which calls on Israel to discuss basic and fundamental issues ... to guarantee the success of the international meeting.” After talks with Abbas, the king spoke with Olmert by telephone to discuss Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts, the palace said.

Meanwhile, Israel said yesterday it had agreed on a prisoner exchange with Hamas in return for a captured soldier several months ago, but that talks broke down after the Islamists seized power in Gaza. “An agreement in principle had been reached three and a half months ago thanks to Egyptian mediation,” Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official in charge of the talks, was quoted as saying by army and public radio.

Dekel has been assigned by Olmert to head efforts to secure the release of three Israeli servicemen snatched in cross-border raids — Cpl. Gilad Shalit who was captured by Gaza militants in June 2006, and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, seized by Hezbollah fighters a month later. “We proposed to release 450 prisoners for Shalit... This difficult decision was taken by the prime minister and since then, we have been trying to see who can be included in the list,” Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon told public radio.

“Unfortunately, ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian mediators have no longer had contact with those who are holding Shalit,” he said. Ramon said Israel was waiting for the Islamists to make the next move.

Under the tentative deal agreed before the Gaza takeover, Israel would release the 450 Palestinian prisoners — out of the more than 11,000 currently detained — in two phases. About 350 would be released in return for Shalit being handed over to Egypt and a week later another 100 would be released and Shalit would be handed over to the Israel.

Meanwhile, UN Middle East envoy Michael Williams expressed “guarded optimism” yesterday about prospects for peace in the region because of growing Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and international involvement. But Williams, in a final report to the Security Council before leaving his job after just three months, said both diplomatic and practical measures needed to be kept up to stop a renewed peace process from running out of steam.

Following a visit to the region, “I returned guardedly optimistic, but conscious of many challenges ahead,” he said. Williams, a Briton, said a “substantive dialogue” developing between Abbas and Olmert and reform efforts by a new Palestinian government had “created growing expectations.” The naming of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as an international Middle East envoy, more active regional diplomacy and preparations for a US-sponsored conference in November on Palestinian statehood have helped, he said.