Israel minister says time for Palestinian talks

TEL AVIV, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Israel's foreign minister said today it was ''about time'' the Jewish state talked to the Palestinians, adding no conditions should be put on meeting President Mahmoud Abbas.

But Tzipi Livni said Abbas should expect nothing from talks, such as a release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, unless militants in the Gaza Strip freed a soldier captured in a cross-border raid on June 25.

Her comments were a softening of remarks by Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who said this week a summit between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, would take place only if the soldier was released first.

''In relation to a meeting with Abu Mazen, I do not think there need to be any conditions for such a meeting,'' Livni, told a news conference in Tel Aviv with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

''It is about time we found a way to talk with the Palestinians and with Abu Mazen in order to find out whether there is a way to promote a process that can lead in the future to a two-state solution.'' But if Abbas wanted anything, Israel would not be able to respond until Corporal Gilad Shalit was freed, she said.

Ties between Israel and the Palestinians, badly strained when the militant Hamas movement won parliamentary elections in January, hit a new low after gunmen seized the soldier and abducted him to the Gaza Strip.

Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza a few days later that has killed around 210 Palestinians, half of them civilians. Preparations for an Olmert-Abbas summit had been in the pipeline, but were shelved after the abduction.

LITTLE CHANCE Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in 2000 amid a surge in violence.

Israeli political analysts see little chance of any substantive negotiations in the near future, with Israel pre-occupied with the aftermath of the war in Lebanon and Hamas still in control of the Palestinian government.

Abbas, a moderate, wants to create through negotiations a state in all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, land captured by Israel in the 1967 W Asia war.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, wants to establish an Islamic state in place of Israel.

Abbas argues he could still be Israel's interlocutor, circumventing Hamas.

Livni also appeared to pour cold water on a call by Lavrov for an international W Asia peace conference.

Lavrov said on Thursday that such a meeting to find a comprehensive solution to the W Asia conflict was ''the only alternative'' to end violence in the region.

The former Soviet Union co-sponsored with the United States the 1991 Madrid Conference, which helped seal peace deals between the Palestinians and Israel and between the Jewish state and Jordan.

''To put all the issues between Israel and different Arab countries together with the Palestinians as one idea I think will only complicate the issues,'' Livni said.

REUTERS MS VC1600