PARIS (AFP) — Israel and the Palestinians "have never been this close" to a peace deal, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday following talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Paris.
Olmert and Abbas were among 43 leaders gathering in Paris for the launch of a new Union for the Mediterranean, which aims to boost cooperation in one of the world's most volatile regions.
"We have never been as close to an accord as we are today," Olmert told a press conference following talks hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy at the French presidential palace.
"We are approaching the moment when we will have to make decisive choices, grave, important choices that will take us to a stage we have never reached before," he said.
Both Abbas and Olmert called on Sarkozy, as president of France, chair of the European Union presidency and host of the new Mediterranean union, to take a front-seat role in steering peace negotiations.
Though the two sides have met regularly since the relaunch of the process last November, after a seven-year hiatus, talks have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
Abbas said that Sarkozy's "friendship" with both Israelis and Palestinians "enables you to play an important role to help the peace process succeed in a few months."
"We have started an in-depth negotiation" with Israel, Abbas said. "We will pursue this effort. We are quite serious."
Olmert is under fire at home on over corruption allegations, after Israeli police questioned him Friday for a third time in a graft investigation that has prompted calls for his resignation.
Israeli media on Sunday predicted his days in office were numbered.
Sarkozy has been stepping up France's Mideast diplomacy for the launch of the Mediterranean union, bringing friends and foes together around the same table, and pushing to advance peace in the region.
The French leader said the union between Europe and its Mediterranean neighbours would help countries in the region "learn to love each other".
"It doesn't mean that all of the problems are resolved of course," Sarkozy said. "But the goal of the summit... is that we learn how to love each other in the Mediterranean, instead of continuing to hate and wage war."
The summit is seeing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad return to the international stage, but while he will join other Arab leaders in sitting at the same table as Olmert, no talks between them are planned.
Olmert said he was "aware of the dangers that threaten the Middle East," mentioning the stand-off over Iran's contested nuclear programme, and hoped indirect peace talks opened with Syria, via Turkey, would "soon become direct".
But he said the peace process with the Palestinians remained Israel's upmost priority.
On Saturday Sarkozy hosted landmark talks between Assad and Lebanon's President Michel Sleiman, whose election in May ended a drawn-out political crisis in Lebanon.
Both countries afterwards announced their decision to establish diplomatic relations, a first since their independence from colonial rule.
Syria, the former power broker in Lebanon, withdrew its troops in 2005 in the aftermath of the killing of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, for which it was widely blamed. Damascus denies involvement.
While Washington continues to blacklist Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, France has moved to bring Assad out of the diplomatic cold, renewing ties broken off after the murder of Hariri, who was a personal friend of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac.
Assad also said he hoped Sarkozy could play a role in the Israeli-Syria peace process.
Israel and Syria, which technically have been at war since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, have held three rounds of indirect talks through Turkey since March.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
