Two top aides to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert flew to Washington overnight ahead of expected peace talks, amid reports of a freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Olmert plans to freeze the growth of settlements as a concession to Palestinians ahead of the planned US-sponsored meeting.
Israel will announce a freeze on settlement construction and declare its willingness to remove "illegal outposts" before the conference due to be held later this year in Annapolis, Maryland, it quoted an official as saying.
"Of the two, a settlement freeze is easier than evacuating the outposts, because this only involves a declaration, not a confrontation with settlers in the field," it quoted the unnamed official as saying.
Israel and the Palestinians have been struggling to thrash out an agreed joint document for the conference that would serve as the basis for future negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.
But the two sides remain divided, with Palestinians wanting a document to address core issues of the conflict -- borders, the fate of refugees, settlements and the status of Jerusalem -- and Israelis favouring a looser declaration.
According to Haaretz, Washington has been demanding that Israel make "significant gestures" on settlements in return for postponing discussion of the core issues until after Annapolis.
Olmert has vowed to proceed with peace talks on the basis of the 2003 roadmap peace plan, which calls on Israel to freeze settlement growth and to withdraw from outposts established after March 2001.
But the internationally-drafted roadmap -- which also calls on both sides to halt violence -- has made no progress since it was adopted.
On Tuesday, Israel sent a delegation to Washington to meet US officials ahead of the Annapolis conference, which Israeli and Palestinian officials have suggested could be held later this month although there is no US confirmation.
"Yoram Turbowicz and Shalom Turjeman, head of the office and political advisor, respectively, to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left Tel Aviv for Washington last night," Miri Eisin, a government spokeswoman said.
The expected international peace meeting is being held in a bid to reignite the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ahead of the final year of George W. Bush's presidency.
"We are talking about difficult discussions and nothing is decided," an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity on Tuesday.
The official said, however, that Olmert is prepared to make territorial concessions in order to preserve a Jewish majority in Israel.
"Olmert is ready for important territorial concessions as well as concessions on the settlements, in order that a Palestinian state can be created and Israel can stay a Jewish and democratic state," the official said.
Olmert earlier this week told a powerful parliamentary committee that he would insist on Palestinians accepting Israel as a Jewish state in an attempt to preclude the return to Israel of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war.
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