By Xinhua,
Jerusalem : Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that he hopes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will stay in his position as the two sides are trying to reach a peace deal within 2008, British daily The Times reported Wednesday.
Abbas, who repeatedly expressed pessimism about the sluggish peace process with Israel, has said that he found no reason to retain his post if no peace agreement could be reached by 2009.
“I prefer not to think about it in these terms. I hope he will not step down and I hope that in six months we will be in a different place altogether,” Olmert told The Times Tuesday in Jerusalem. “I still think that the basic distance between what I and Abbas exchanged at the very initial stage was bridgeable.”
Olmert lays little hope in Marwan Barghouti, the young Fatah leader currently jailed in Israel, who is the only man to unite the secular Fatah and the militant Hamas, as many believed.
“Imagine that Barghouti is released tomorrow. Is there a way for him to prove that he’s not a collaborator with the Israelis? There’s only one way: to be more extreme than the present leadership,” said Olmert.
Commenting on the ongoing bribery probe against him, Olmert found some solace from the careers of two foreign national leaders– former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
“I look at the manner in which my friends Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi were in a similar situation. They were accused in similar ways, one of trading contributions for titles and one for trying to bribe a judge. They were cleared entirely and didn’t stop taking care of the State,” he said.
The Israeli leader, who allegedly took illicit money from a U.S. businessman, is set to be put on the grill by police again on Friday morning, the second time since the latest and the fifth investigation against him emerged earlier this month.