Abbas to Meet Israeli Vice PM Sunday
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold talks with Israeli vice prime minister Shaul Mofaz on Sunday, a senior Palestinian official told Voice of Palestine radio.
"President Abbas will meet with Mofaz on Sunday in Ramallah at Mofaz's request," negotiator Mohammad Eshtayeh told the official radio station Wednesday.
It will be the highest-level meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials since May 12, when Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho met Abbas to deliver a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A spokesman for Mofaz declined to confirm or deny the report.
The Palestinians' official news agency WAFA initially carried quotes from Abbas adviser Nimr Hammad confirming the Sunday meeting, but later changed the story, saying it was unconfirmed.
Eshtayeh told Voice of Palestine that the meeting was a standard part of Abbas' dialogue with various parties.
"Such a meeting is nothing new and comes in the framework of president Abbas' meetings with a full spectrum of actors in the Israeli and Jewish communities," he said.
"President Abbas will listen to Mofaz's ideas, but we do not think that he will present political ideas that we can work with," he said.
"We do not count much on such meetings nor believe that the Israeli government as currently composed can offer anything serious on the peace process."
He added that the meeting "is not a round of negotiations," and stressed that the Palestinians remained committed to seeking a settlement freeze and clear parameters for discussions on borders before returning to direct peace talks.
Talks between the two sides have been on hold since late September 2010, with the Palestinians refusing to resume them without the moratorium and a deal to base border talks on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War.
Israel wants talks without preconditions, and the international community has urged both sides to pursue a path back to the negotiating table.
Early this year Molcho and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat held several rounds of "proximity" talks in Amman, intended to chart a path back to negotiations.
But the talks ended without a way forward, and a later exchange of letters between Abbas and Netanyahu also failed to result in a plan for the resumption of negotiations.
Source: Agence France Presse
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