JERUSALEM, 2 April 2007 — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday invited Arab leaders to a regional peace conference to discuss their ideas for resolving the Middle East conflict.
Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is currently president of the European Union, Olmert said: “I would take advantage of this important opportunity of being here in Jerusalem with the president of the European Union to invite to a meeting all Arab heads of state, including, of course, the king of Saudi Arabia, whom I regard as an important leader, in order to engage in dialogue.”
He said each side would bring its own demands, and neither would try to dictate terms.
At a summit in Riyadh last week, the Arab League renewed a 2002 Saudi peace offer that would recognize Israel in exchange for withdrawal from all captured territories and a just solution for the Palestinian refugees. Olmert welcomed the decision but said Israel did not accept all parts of the plan.
“I think this new way of thinking, the willingness to recognize Israel as an established fact and to debate the conditions of the future solution, is a step that I can’t help but appreciate,” he said.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Olmert should agree to the Arab peace initiative. “I think if he accepts the Arab peace initiative, it would open the way to many conferences, not one,” he said.
Olmert’s announcement came after the United States and Egypt urged Israel to agree to quickly start talks with a committee of Arab states on how to move the peace process forward.
In weekend talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and other officials, Washington and Cairo proposed that Israel agree to meet “as soon as possible” with a working group approved at the Arab summit to begin negotiating the details of a possible agreement.
Several Arab League countries would talk “formally and publicly as a group” with Israel, a senior diplomat said of the proposal, calling it unprecedented in its potential scope. Talks in the past have generally been on a bilateral basis.
“The ball has passed from the Arab side to Israel’s side and there is a need now to respond,” Israel’s military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin was quoted by a senior government official as telling the Israeli Cabinet yesterday.
At the Riyadh summit, Arab leaders agreed to set up a committee to follow up on the peace proposal in talks with the Quartet of Middle East mediators and other “international parties.” Israel opposes giving Palestinian refugees the right of return to their former homes in what is now the Jewish state, and it wants to hold onto some of the major settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
“We would like to promote any dialogue with them (moderate Arab states) in order to seek peace and normalization between Israel and these states,” Livni said yesterday.
She said she spoke over the weekend with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit but did not offer any details.
Separately, senior American officials pressed Livni’s aides to respond positively to the Arab offer, diplomats said.
“We are awaiting a response from the Israeli government and we hope their response will be positive so that we can move ahead,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said at a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Chancellor Merkel.
If Israel agrees, joint talks could initially be held with Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, and possibly other Arab League members, the diplomats said. The United Nations has raised the possibilty of an expanded meeting of the Quartet that would include Israeli and Saudi leaders, the diplomats said.
