By DPA
Ramallah : Admitting that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli premier Ehud Olmert faced some “tough choices,” US President George W. Bush expressed optimism Thursday that the sides would be able to reach a peace deal by the year’s end.
“I believe there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office,” he told a joint news conference with Abbas in Ramallah, after talks with the president and the Palestinian leadership.
He conceded, however, “conditions on the ground are very difficult,” and said he intended to “nudge the process forward”, apply “pressure” and “be a pain if I need to be a pain.”
“In order that there be lasting peace, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will have to come together and make tough choices and I think they will.”
Although he stopped short of demanding a total Israeli freeze in settlement construction in the West Bank, he said he “certainly” expressed his concern about the issue to Israel and also called on it to help, “not hinder,” the Palestinians improve their security forces.
Despite Bush’s refusal to demand a total settlement freeze, Abbas said he was “fully satisfied” with the outcome of the presidential visit.
“We are in agreement on all topics, all topics are clear,” he said.
Abbas also welcomed as “very positive” statements by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which she said the US had always opposed the settlement of Har Homa (north of Bethlehem) and made “no distinction” between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
Bush “understood this issue very well,” he said.
Abbas said his and Olmert’s negotiating teams were due to meet in a “few days” to begin the long-delayed negotiations on the “core issues” of their mutual conflict, which include the future of Jerusalem, demarcation of borders and the Palestinian refugee problem.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas, which rejects the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in favour of an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, slammed the statements by the two presidents.
During the first visit to Ramallah by a sitting US president, Bush was received by an honour guard and a red carpet, but a simple and brief welcoming ceremony that excluded an orchestra playing the US and Palestinian national anthems.
Thousands of Palestinian policemen were deployed on the streets to ensure the visit went off without any security hitch.
A demonstration by dozens of protestors in the city centre condemning the presidential visit was quickly broken up by the police.
On Thursday night, Bush is scheduled to dine with Olmert in Jerusalem. On Friday he is to hold talks with Tony Blair, the envoy of the so-called Middle East Quartet of the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, before leaving for Kuwait – the next stop on his eight-day regional swing.