GAZA CITY/RAMALLAH, 30 September 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are likely to meet on Tuesday to prepare for a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, a Palestinian official said yesterday.

“Nothing has been specified but it will be most probably on Tuesday,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who was unaware of the venue, said.

Erekat told reporters after a meeting with UN official John Dugard at his Ramallah office that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and joint Palestinian-Israeli working teams may participate in the meeting.

As part of a series of meetings to prepare for the international conference due to take place in mid-November in the United States, the two leaders last held talks on Sept. 10.

There was no confirmation from the Israeli side of the next meeting but Olmert has said he would meet again with Abbas after the Jewish holidays which end on Oct. 4.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has cautioned Abbas to be “realistic” about the prospects for Middle East peace, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.

The US-sponsored meeting should define the groundwork for settling questions over the final status of the Palestinian territories, Abbas said in the interview in New York.

“Then we will begin negotiations on the details under a timeframe, which ought not to exceed six months, to reach a peace treaty,” he added. But Livni was notably cool about the timeframe in Israel’s first reaction to the proposal.

“We must be courageous in taking decisions but also sufficiently wise to progress toward peace in a realistic manner in order to avoid failure...and to only talk about what is possible,” the daily Yediot Aharonot quoted Livni as saying on its website.

The Israeli foreign minister met Abbas in New York after the Palestinian president’s address to the UN General Assembly, where he called on the international community to “seize the opportunity” presented by the November meeting, to relaunch the peace process.

But both sides have differed on their expectations of the meeting proposed by US President George W. Bush.

— With input from agencies