RIYADH (AFP) — Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks on the situation in the Palestinian territories ahead of US President George W. Bush's trip to the region, the Palestinian ambassador in Riyadh said on Thursday.
Abbas will also brief King Abdullah and other Saudi officials on the status of talks with Israel, "which have not yielded results because of Israel's ongoing settlement policy and procrastination," Jamal al-Shobaki told AFP.
He said the discussions will cover Bush's trip to the Middle East next week, when the US president will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories in a bid to give a push to peace talks which were relaunched at an international conference in Annapolis in November.
Bush's tour will include a stop in Saudi Arabia.
Shobaki said Abbas's talks in Riyadh are bound to touch on the crisis between his secular Fatah party and Hamas, which has been festering since the Islamist movement routed Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip last June, resulting in the dismissal of the Hamas-led unity government and a new Western-backed government being formed in the West Bank.
Abbas frequently visits oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which brokered last year's short-lived unity government.
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