Jordan’s King Abdallah conferred yesterday in Amman with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and urged the Israelis and the Palestinians to reach a peace treaty before the end of the year, an official statement said.

Olmert paid a whirlwind visit to Jordan as part of Abdallah’s endeavors aimed at pushing Israel and the Palestinians to speed up their stalled negotiations on core issues, Jerusalem, the settlements, the frontiers and refugees, according to the statement from the royal court.

Olmert’s visit to Jordan came in the midst of mounting Arab concerns that Israel was not serious in its talks with the Palestinians and two weeks before US President George W Bush’s farewell trip to the region later this month.

“The monarch stressed the need for reaching an agreement before the end of the year based on the two-state formula and in accordance with the commitments made by the two parties during the Annapolis conference in November,” the statement said.

“Such an agreement should address all final status questions and lead to the setting up of an independent Palestinian state,” the monarch was quoted as saying. Abdallah also told Olmert that Israel “should improve the living circumstances of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Meanwhile, a Jordanian court has sentenced a man to six months in jail after convicting him of the honor killing of his 16-year-old daughter.

The court ruled yesterday that the man killed his married daughter because she had an affair out of the wedlock. The enraged father severely beat her with a baton and ultimately electrocuted her in November 2006.

“In November 2006, the man lost consciousness after his daughter told him that she had slept with a young man. She also cursed him and said it was none of his business,” the source told AFP.

“When the enraged man woke up, he beat the girl on the head with a stick and electrocuted her by attaching bare electric wires to her body. She died immediately.” The father committed the crime in the exclusive Abdoun area, west of Amman, and was charged with murder after he confessed to murdering his daughter “to cleanse the family’s honor,” the source said.