Abbas, Olmert to meet, divided on Palestinian unity

JERUSALEM, Mar 11 (Reuters) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hold talks today that are only likely to highlight their divisions over a Palestinian unity government whose formation appears imminent.

''We don't expect any results,'' a senior Abbas aide said of the meeting that opens at 2030 IST.

Olmert has vowed to boycott the unity government that Abbas is forming with Hamas Islamists unless it recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts interim peace deals as demanded by the Quartet of West Asia mediators.

But the Israeli leader has promised publicly to keep a channel of communication open with Abbas, a policy promoted by the United States, which plans to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice back to the region in the next few weeks.

Olmert and Abbas last met on February 19 in trilateral talks with Rice that ended with no sign of progress towards resuming peace negotiations on Palestinian statehood broken off six years ago.

The Saudi-brokered Palestinian coalition agreement, which ended weeks of warfare between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah faction, contains a vague promise to ''respect'' previous Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords.

But it does not commit the incoming government to abide by those pacts, nor to recognise Israel and renounce violence, conditions key to resumption of aid to the Palestinian Authority cut off by the West after Hamas came to power a year ago.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said the new administration could be announced as early tomorrow.

''NO ALTERNATIVE'' ''A decision by Abu Mazen (Abbas) on the creation of a unity government with Hamas that does not recognise Israel is imminent,'' Amos Gilad, chief strategist for Israel's Defence Ministry, told Israel Radio.

''This being the case, there is an accentuation of the need to underscore and emphasise that there is no alternative'' to the Quartet preconditions, he said.

Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state. The group continues to say it will not formally recognise Israel and its 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Abbas's aide said the Palestinian leader would ask Olmert to view the unity government ''as a positive step'' and give it a chance.

Abbas was also expected to propose expanding a shaky four-month-old truce in the Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians seek statehood in both territories, which Israel captured from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 West Asia war.

Israeli officials say they would not consider broadening the ceasefire until Palestinians stopped firing rockets from Gaza. Some Palestinian militants also oppose expanding the truce.

Israeli officials said that as a goodwill move, Olmert would tell Abbas he planned to order the opening hours at the key Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel to be expanded.

Gaza has suffered acute privation since the aid embargo took hold.

Abbas, who is at pains to show diplomatic progress to his people, has suggested more sweeping gestures from Israel such as a mass-amnesty for Palestinian prisoners. Olmert has ruled this out before an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza is freed.

REUTERS SP BD1503