Leaders agree to ongoing talks

The meetings are expected to begin next month.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
JERUSALEM -- After three days of intensive diplomacy in the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Tuesday that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues and "a political horizon."
The agreement steps up the pace of face-to-face discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but falls well short of starting substantive negotiations on the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"We are not yet at final status negotiations," Rice told a news conference. "These are initial discussions to build confidence between the parties."
Rice's announcement had been postponed from Monday night to Tuesday morning because discussions lasted longer than expected. Olmert objected to holding negotiations on the key issues of a final peace agreement: the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and whether Palestinian refugees could return to their former lands in Israel.
Abbas has repeatedly called for such negotiations, but Olmert says they are impossible as long as the new Palestinian unity government -- a coalition of Abbas's Fatah party and the militant Hamas faction -- fails to meet international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements.
About the talks
The Israeli Cabinet decided last week that talks with Abbas would be limited to humanitarian and security issues.
However, Rice said that future discussions between the two leaders would go beyond that and that she would meet Abbas and Olmert periodically, separately and together.
"They achieved something that I frankly didn't expect to achieve, which is very regularized meetings between the two of them in which they will talk not just about their specific and more day-to-day issues, but also about a political horizon," Rice said.
That horizon would be "consistent with the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with the 'road map,'" Rice said, referring to the U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan.
But U.S. and Israeli officials were vague about what "political horizon" talks would mean in the absence of negotiations on the issues central to a final peace deal.
"I don't know," said a senior administration official. "I wouldn't want to prescribe."
Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Olmert, said: "Political horizon doesn't mean final status issues. We're talking about the framework to go forward to achieve the vision of a two-state solution."
Focus
Rice said that the meetings, expected to begin in mid-April, would focus first on more immediate concerns such as easing Israeli restrictions on movement by ordinary Palestinians, improving passage through border crossings and preventing arms smuggling and rocket fire by militants in the Gaza Strip.
U.S. officials said the hope is that those discussions could lead to more substantive political talks.
"The structure is to establish some confidence on those humanitarian issues, on those day-to-day issues and on the security issues," the senior American official said. "With respect to the political horizon, no door is closed, but the easiest one to open is the one that starts with things that are easier to talk about and get done."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Rice had "succeeded in maintaining the channel of political communication between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert."