Israeli, Palestinian leaders call off summit

updated 11:49 a.m. ET June 6, 2007

JERUSALEM - Israeli and Palestinian leaders Wednesday called off a planned summit this week, dealing a new setback to efforts to halt fighting between the Israeli army and militants in the Gaza Strip and restart peacemaking.

The Palestinian foreign minister, meanwhile, said the so-called Quartet of Mideast negotiators had invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to a meeting in Egypt on June 25. An official in Olmert’s office, David Baker, said no invitation had been received.

In an article Wednesday, Olmert said Israel was ready to discuss an Arab peace proposal, but his Palestinian counterpart called the climate between the two sides “catastrophic.” Their comments, in dueling opinion pieces in the British newspaper The Guardian, came as the two sides reflect on the 1967 Mideast war, which began 40 years ago Tuesday.

Olmert and Abbas had been expected to meet Thursday in the West Bank town of Jericho, in what would have been their first talks on Palestinian territory. Baker said the meeting was postponed at the request of the Palestinians.

“Prime Minister Olmert will be ready to meet with Abu Mazen at any time,” Baker said, using Abbas’ nickname.

Tax revenue demands rejected
Palestinian officials said Israel has rejected demands to release hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Palestinian tax revenues, restart peace talks or accept Abbas’ proposal for restoring a collapsed cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and extending it to the West Bank.

“Israel is not responding positively to these demands, so the president decided not to go to this meeting,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr said. He later said Olmert and Abbas were invited to Cairo by the Quartet — the U.S., European Union, U.N. and Russia.

Abu Amr said the meeting was important because it signaled stepped up international involvement. “If the Quartet meeting does not come with concrete results, it is going to undermine the credibility of the Quartet,” he said.

Under prodding from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Olmert and Abbas agreed in March to meet every two weeks with the aim of discussing the outlines of a permanent peace deal.

However, they have met only once since then, and any chances of reviving peace talks have been clouded by the resumption of fighting in Gaza.

A five-month truce collapsed last month when Hamas militants began firing barrages of crude rockets into southern Israel. The Israeli army has responded with dozens of airstrikes and several brief ground incursions. More than 60 Palestinians, most of them militants, and two Israeli civilians have been killed.

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