JERUSALEM (AFP) — US President George W. Bush has reaffirmed his support for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and insisted a criminal corruption probe into close his ally will not derail Middle East peace talks.
In an interview with Israeli journalists in Washington on the eve of a trip to the Middle East, Bush declined to comment on the Olmert investigation but said his "relations with the prime minister have been nothing but excellent."
Bush stressed that "the vision of a (Palestinian) state is such a powerful notion and such an important notion for Israel's very existence, that I do believe that we have a chance to get something defined," according to a transcript published on the Haaretz newspaper's website on Tuesday.
Israel and the Palestinians relaunched formal peace negotiations in November at a US conference hosted by Bush, who said he hoped to see the signing of a full peace agreement before leaving office in January 2009.
"This is not an Olmert plan; this is a plan of a government. (Israeli foreign minister) Tzipi Livni is handling the negotiations... (Defence Minister Ehud) Barak is involved," Bush said.
Livni, a senior member of Olmert's centrist Kadima party, is favoured to succeed him if he is forced to step down over allegations he received funds illegally from a US millionaire in the 1990s when he was Jerusalem mayor and then industry minister.
Israeli police raided Jerusalem city hall late on Monday in search of documents related to the investigation -- one of four pending corruption probes against the prime minister -- amid increasing calls for him to resign.
An opinion poll published on Monday in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper found that 59 percent of Israelis want Olmert to step down and 60 percent do not believe his denial of any wrongdoing.
Just 10 percent of the 500 Israeli adults interviewed thought Olmert was the best suited to be prime minister, with right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu getting the most support at 37 percent.
Olmert, 62 has denied allegations he received bribes but has admitted accepting election campaign contributions from US-Jewish businessman Morris Talanksy which he insists were not illegal.
Bush was to arrive in Israel and meet Olmert on Wednesday at the start of a five-day trip to the region anchored on Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations and also including stopovers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Although Bush is expected to discuss the peace process with Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas during the trip he insisted he "will come not as somebody who demands, but somebody who encourages."
"I'm not running for the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm just trying to be a guy to use the influence of the United States to move the process along," Bush said.
The talks have made little progress since they were launched five months ago and have been hobbled by continuing violence in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The two sides also remain bitterly divided on the core issues of the decades-old conflict, including future borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
At the end of the interview Bush was asked about his legacy in the region and whether he had any regrets about his years in office, to which he responded "I probably would have toned my rhetoric down at times."
But he insisted he was not worried about how history would judge his presidency, which has largely been defined by the war in Iraq.
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office. But one of them has got to be, he clearly saw the threat and he did something about it," Bush said.
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