Israel's Olmert seen meeting Jordanian king on Thursday

JERUSALEM, June 6 (Reuters) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will likely meet Jordan's King Abdullah this week as part of the Israeli leader's efforts to win regional support for his West Bank plan, political sources said today.

They said Olmert was provisionally scheduled to travel to Jordan on Thursday for the talks. Olmert met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last week and is expected to hold his first peace summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the end of the month.

Jordanian officials had no immediate comment.

The prospects for stable Palestinian statehood in the West Bank, which Israel captured from neighbouring Jordan in the 1967 Wasia war, are of special concern to King Abdullah given the Palestinian majority in his own country.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.

Olmert has proposed a plan for drawing Israel's borders with the West Bank with or without Palestinian agreement, but said he was ready to meet Abbas to explore whether stalled efforts to end more than 5 years of fighting could be resumed.

The ''realignment plan'' would entail evacuating isolated Jewish settlements on occupied land -- something welcomed in the Arab world as a possible spur to peace -- but also the de facto annexation of major settlement blocs to Israel.

Palestinians have condemned the proposal as denying them the viable state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel quit last year after 38 years of occupation.

Peace hopes have dimmed since the Islamic militant group Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, scored a crushing victory over Abbas's long-dominant Fatah party in a January election and formed a new Palestinian government.

After talks with Olmert in Washington last month, U.S. President George W. Bush said the prime minister had presented ''bold ideas'' but a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians was preferable to unilateral moves.

Olmert is also to travel to Britain and France next week to brief their leaders on his proposal.

Reuters CH RN1305