Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert: "I hope to resume talks for a final peace agreement with the Palestinians after March 28th"17/01/2006
By The Associated Press Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that he hopes to resume talks for a final peace agreement with the Palestinians after Israel`s March 28 elections.
"I hope that after [the January 25 Palestinian] elections results are in, and after our election results are in, that I will able to enter into negotiations with Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas]... on a final status agreement between us and the Palestinians," Olmert told a news conference in Jerusalem.
A condition for resuming the talks, Olmert said, would be Abbas` disarming militant Palestinian groups - the same condition Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had long set and a key demand of the internationally brokered Middle East
road map peace plan.
Olmert said that the road map, which called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, would form the basis for negotiations.
The plan stalled shortly after its presentation more than two years ago because of Israeli settlement expansion and the PA`s failure to disarm militants.
Olmert also defended a recent Israeli decision to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote in the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections.
"We don`t concede our right to all of Jerusalem, but of course we have an interest in preserving the link of East Jerusalem Palestinians to the West Bank entity," Olmert said, explaining that Israel does not want to be blamed for causing the elections to be canceled.
Palestinian leaders had warned that the balloting would not proceed if Jerusalem Palestinians were barred from voting.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday that Abbas has promised to disband militant groups after the elections, and that therefore "Israel will not provide the Palestinian Authority any excuse for postponement of the elections and evading this commitment."
Olmert, who was mayor of Jerusalem for a decade beginning in 1993, has said in the past that Israel might have to relinquish some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, the sector of the city Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
He still opposes giving up all of the eastern sector, and in particular, the walled Old City, with its key holy sites of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, close associates have said.
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