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Abbas Says No Progress in Talks With Bush
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
The Associated Press
Friday 25 April 2008
Washington - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday he failed to achieve
any progress in Middle East peace talks with President Bush and was returning
home with little to show for his visit.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the Palestinian leader sounded pessimistic
about the prospects of achieving any deal with Israel this year despite a big
U.S. push that began five months ago at a summit in Annapolis, Md.
"Frankly, so far nothing has been achieved. But we are still conducting
direct work to have a solution," Abbas said.
Abbas said the biggest obstacle is Israel's continued expansion of Jewish settlements
on Palestinian-occupied territories.
"We demanded the Americans implement the first phase of the road map that
talks about the cessation of settlement expansion," Abbas said, expressing
disappointment the U.S. hasn't exerted more pressure on Israel to stop. "This
is the biggest blight that stands as a big rock in the path of negotiations."
Asked for comment, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: "President
Bush is helping to push the process forward. This wasn't a meeting in which
major breakthroughs were expected.
"Ultimately, this is for the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to
an agreement. Each party has more to do - and given the serious commitment of
the leaders, the president remains confident that defining a state by the end
of the year is still possible."
Israel is pushing forward with controversial building projects on disputed
land in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and is refusing to take down illegal
settlement outposts, release Palestinian prisoners, halt military incursions,
and dismantle roadblocks that severely disrupt daily life.
Abbas' aides said he also was upset after his lunch Thursday with Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice. While discussing what a peace deal would look like,
Rice didn't mention the Palestinian goal of creating a state based on borders
before Israel captured Palestinian land during the 1967 Mideast war.
"We demanded that they talk about the '67 borders," Abbas told AP,
showing a rare flash of anger. "None of them talks about the '67 borders."
Asked whether U.S. officials offered any new U.S. proposals, Abbas said no.
"They are exerting efforts. And we are still negotiating," he said,
but he noted that no progress had been made on any of the core issues.
"All the files are still open. None of them are concluded. The situation
is still as it was," Abbas said, speaking in Arabic.
The main unresolved issues include the final borders of a Palestinian state,
the fate of Jerusalem, disputed Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Bush didn't respond directly
when Abbas brought up the issue of Palestinian objections to continuing Israeli
settlement expansion when the two leaders met Thursday at the White House.
"Bush told him (Abbas) that I'm focusing on the bigger picture,"
Erekat explained.
Abbas said he was looking for a full Middle East peace framework agreement
that would be detailed and includes timetables, while the Israelis have signaled
that a "declaration of principles" would be enough of an achievement
before Bush leaves office in January 2009.
"We don't want a declaration of principle because we had one," Abbas
said, referring to the 1993 peace agreement reached at Oslo between the Palestinians
and Israel. "Now we want a normal agreement. And then we can go for the
details."
Despite his disappointment, Abbas said he would still meet with Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert regularly in hopes of achieving a deal. But there are no
three-way talks scheduled anytime soon with Bush, Abbas and Olmert.
Bush is scheduled to visit Israel in May to help Olmert celebrate the country's
60th anniversary, and then the U.S. president will travel to the Red Sea resort
of Sharm el-Sheikh to see Abbas separately.
"It will be a bilateral meeting between me and Bush. That is the meeting
I was invited for," Abbas said.
Abbas said the one thing he did achieve during his U.S visit was to lay out
the Palestinian conditions for any peace deal and press his case that he cannot
go for any partial agreement because the Palestinian people would not accept
it.
"We have made clear our position to the president, to the State Department
and to the Congress," Abbas said during the 15-minute interview in his
hotel room in Washington. "And now our position is very clear to all of
them."
Abbas' moderate and Western-backed government rules the West Bank, the territory
that would eventually form the bulk of an independent Palestinian state. Hamas,
the Islamic militant group that seized control of Gaza and serves a rival force
to Abbas, is not involved in the peace negotiations with Israel.
Abbas has been losing popular support for the peace process due to a lack of
any changes on the ground for people whose daily lives have been disrupted by
Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel says are meant to maintain security
and stop militant attacks on Israeli citizens.
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