Middle East: Efforts to arrange a summit between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas are deadlocked, a senior Israeli official has said.
"We offered Abu Mazen [Abbas] a meeting and he seemed uninterested," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "We are still offering, but he said it was conditional on releasing prisoners, and we will not free prisoners until Gilad Shalit is released."
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, an aide to Mr Abbas, said that preparations for a meeting between the two leaders were continuing.
Cpl Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was abducted by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip in June. They have demanded that Israel release hundreds of Palestinians from its jails in return for freeing him.
Mr Olmert's chief of staff, Yoram Turbowicz, met Mr Erekat earlier this month to discuss the summit, but no date for a meeting was announced.
The United States hopes that talks between the two leaders could help to bolster Mr Abbas, a moderate, in his power struggle with the Islamic movement Hamas, which defeated his Fatah group in Palestinian elections in January.
A summit would be the first formal meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Mr Olmert took over as prime minister in January. The two last met, informally, in June, days before Israel began an offensive against militants in the Gaza Strip after the soldier was seized.
- (Reuters)