By NNN-KUNA
Gaza : The meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, held at the latter’s office in West Jerusalem, has ended by agreement to meet again in two weeks.
After the meeting Tuesday, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Palestine TV that “President Abbas affirmed to Olmert that final status issues must be dealt with in aggregate not separately.”
Abbas also called on Olmert to cease all settlement activities in Jerusalem and all Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people, said Eraikat, adding that Abbas stressed “the necessity to free all Palestinian prisoners and detainees, especially those from the Palestinian leadership, in particular Marwan Berghouti,” a former leader of Hamas.
The Palestinian president also appealed to Olmert to “break the siege on Gaza Strip, agree on calming down the tension there, and refrain from launching a military operation in Gaza,” said Erekat.
Erekat denied that the two leaders agreed on treating the question of Jerusalem separately from other issues seminal to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Olmert had said prior to his meeting with Abbas that the latter agreed to postpone discussing the question of Jerusalem, a notion denied subsequently by more than one Palestinian official.
Tuesday’s meeting took place, in the presence of teams of negotiators from both sides, amid pessimistic prognostications that no final peace agreement could be reached before the year is out.