By Xinhua,
Ramallah : Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday to evaluate peace talks, a Ramallah-based newspaper reported Tuesday.
In addition to discussing the ongoing negotiations on the final-status issues, Abbas will hear from Olmert about his plan to release a number of Palestinian prisoners as he has promised earlier, al-Ayyam daily reported.
President Abbas will also reiterate his demands that Israel stop settlement activities in the West Bank, a territory considered to be part of a future Palestinian statehood on which the two sides are negotiating.
The two leaders have been holding almost biweekly meetings since peace talks resumed at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference in November.
The negotiations have failed to make any tangible progress due to Israeli continuation of the settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Abbas meets Israeli President Shimon Peres Tuesday in Jerusalem, which Israelis describe as historic since Peres hosts Abbas for the first time in the “presidential residence” in the city that the Palestinians regard as their capital.
Meanwhile, the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, slammed the meeting as an attempt to save weak Abbas and Israeli leaders.
“This meeting agrees with the reports about a possible secret deal to save the weak parties,” said Salah al-Bardaweel, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza.
“They will cook an agreement and but it on the shelf and prepare the atmosphere to announce it to avoid political scandals,” al-Bardaweel said.
“Abbas continues his meetings with the Zionists in the occupied Jerusalem in an old-new way without paying attention to their policies of home demolishing and the excavations under the al-Aqsa mosque,” al-Bardaweel added.