Olmert To Meet Bush as Pressure Builds on Israel

WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Olmert, meeting here today with a president changing course in the Middle East after his party lost control of Congress, will face renewed pressure to negotiate with the Palestinian Arabs. He could also clash with President Bush about Iran.

The State Department has been making preliminary plans since August for a regional peace conference in the style of the 1991 Madrid negotiations organized by President George H.W. Bush. Until this weekend, however, the planning was largely moot, because President Abbas was unable to form a unity government with Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Palestinian Authority legislature.

All of that changed yesterday with the announcement of a new government for the Palestinian Authority and the tentative proposal that a biologist from Gaza, Mohammed Shbeir, will take over the prime minister position from the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniya. Mr. Haniya yesterday said he would only resign if American sanctions were lifted on Arab banks that deal with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Adding momentum to peace negotiations, foreign ministers meeting in Cairo at an emergency Arab League summit announced their plans for a meeting to reach a final resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

These developments bolster what the State Department has called its "Sunni strategy," a plan to entice Arab allies to cooperate more fully with financial sanctions on Iran and stabilize Iraq in exchange for renewed American focus on a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Yesterday, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, told Reuters that the Jewish state would be open to participating in a peace conference but had not dropped its position that it would not negotiate with Hamas so long as the organization was committed to terrorism and would not acknowledge prior agreements the Palestinian Authority has made with Israel.

In an interview published yesterday in the Washington Post, Prime Minister Olmert said he would negotiate with the new Palestinian government if it adhered to the principles of the road map document originally drafted in 2003 by America, Europe, Russia and the United Nations. He said,"If Hamas will formally accept these principles — which are to recognize Israel's right to exist, to end all terror and hostile activities against Israel and to recognize and implement all the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority — then I'll be ready to sit down with such a government even if it includes Hamas representatives."

Such specificity, however, was absent from the Arab League communique. The document only said such a summit would be aimed at "reaching a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on all tracks according to the relevant international resolutions and the principle of land for peace."

After the meeting in Cairo, the Arab League's secretary general called on Arab banks to lift their embargo of the Palestinian Authority that has been in place since Hamas took power. The embargo is not only a matter for Arab lenders. The motivation for the bank sanctions stems from the Treasury Department, which has threatened to close American financial markets to banks that do business with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Also on Mr. Olmert's agenda will be Iran, which may be a source of tension with Mr. Bush. The president's nomination of a former director of central intelligence, Robert Gates, last week to head the Pentagon is a signal of a new readiness by America to negotiate with Iran before it ends enrichment of uranium. Mr. Gates, as the New York Sun reported last Thursday, was co-chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations task force in 2005 that advocated direct American contacts with Iran and also explicitly called on America to warn Israel not to wage a preliminary strike on the Islamic Republic's centrifuges and reactors.

In his interview with the Washington Post, Mr. Olmert refused to rule out military action. He also said President Bush is the "last person on Earth who needs to be reminded of what should be done to stop Iran." The Israeli premier also said he would favor "compromises" if they guaranteed that Iran stopped short of attaining nuclear capabilities. But he warned, "I don't believe that Iran will accept such compromise unless they have a very good reason to fear the consequences of not reaching it. In other words: Iran must start to fear."